Wednesday, October 3, 2012

What Will Be The Future of Book Sales

Open BookAfter writing yesterday about Barnes & Noble not selling books published by Amazon, as well as Apple not selling books that have links to Amazon, I got to thinking about the whole publishing industry. We could say that change is inevitable however I like to think of it as evolution. Book publishing and selling has/is changing.

Publishers are beside themselves with losses of dollars from the sales of eBooks and the power that is now in the hands of Amazon, Apple, and now Google. They do not welcome the change and neither does the newspaper industry, the movie industry, the recording industry.

It appears that no one likes change but change happens. It happens at the top and it happens at the bottom and everywhere in between. That is what makes Life interesting, there is always learning. In the words of Jim Rohn; “Don’t get frustrated, get fascinated!” It has kept me going.

After writing yesterday I began to wonder “What if Apple would not sell your book if it mentioned Windows, HP or Dell?” What if Google would not sell your books if they mentioned Apple, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble?” This list could go on and on. I mean we even have Microsoft Press Books and they do not sell books re: Apple or Linux for that matter.

Who would sell “50 Shades of Grey”? Or the Bible? I guess I should have listed them the other way around.

The future? Publishers need to get into the retail market. They, publishers, must take it to the people. Refuse to sell through middlemen. In other words each publisher sets up their own Internet retail environment. They could then control the price and the media in which their product is produced. Sounds reasonable to me.

More change.

We do have one working example of this and that would be O’Reilly Media Inc.. I have purchased an eBookO'Reilly Logo directly from O’Reilly. O’Reilly books can often be found at Amazon as well as Barnes & Noble but how long will this last?

How long will it be before we get over the idea that we have to ‘feel’ the paper? How long before we can get all the data on the web including 3-D representations of products thereby reducing out need to visit Best Buy? When we go out it will be to visit, to see, and in my case, have a cup of coffee where good people congregate.

Oh that sounds good. I can take my wife and my computer with me everywhere. What else do I need?  I am sure someone will think of something.


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