somersault

Book Business reports Bowker has released the "2009 US Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Report," ($999, www.bookconsumer.com) which includes consumer-based research on who buys books and why. The 2009 Annual Report is culled from more 44,000 total respondents, responsible for the purchase of 118,000 books in 2009.  

According to Bowker, the report includes in-depth book data, demographics, psychographics, and genre-category breakdowns. "This year's report provides data not available in any other source, with a scope that captures the changing nature of retail channels, including the growing presence of such mass merchandisers as Wal-Mart," the company reported in a news release. "The report captures the explosion of new electronic formats."

Some highlights from the report are:   

• More than 40% of Americans over the age of 13 purchased a book in 2009, and the average age of the American book buyer is 42.
• Women lead men in overall purchases, contributing 64% of sales. Even among detective and thriller genres, women top 60% of the sales. Fantasy titles are purchased evenly by men and women.
• Baby-boomers are the largest purchasing generation, making up 30% of sales. Their elders — matures — contribute 16%. 
• More income doesn't mean more book purchases. Thirty-two percent of the books purchased in 2009 were from households earning less than $35,000 annually, and 20% of those sales were for children's books.
• The top-selling non-fiction genre is biography-autobiography.

Although online retailers have been making deep inroads in the bookselling market, the major bookstore chains sold more units than their e-tailing competitors last year, according to a report in Publishers Weekly.   

Examining why consumers buy books, the study found topic/subject and author to be the two most important motivating factors, although there was a distinct difference between fiction and nonfiction. The author was the single most important reason consumers chose a novel, while subject was the top buying factor for nonfiction titles. The author finished below "browsing through a book" as a reason for buying a nonfiction work. The most common way consumers became aware of a title in 2009 was at a store through an in-store display, with recommendation the second most popular.

Reporter Jeff Rivera quoted Seth Godin last Friday evening on Media Bistro’s Galleycat that he is done with traditional book publishing. Since Seth is such an influencer and in the vanguard of consumer thinking, this pronouncement is going to shake-up the publishing world. People are going to sit up, take notice, and make changes. This is how Jeff quotes Seth:

I've decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way. 12 for 12 and I'm done. I like the people, but I can't abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don't usually visit to buy something they don't usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that's hard to spread ... I really don't think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically. No, it's not 'better', but it's different. So while I'm not sure what format my writing will take, I'm not planning on it being the 1907 version of hardcover publishing any longer.

In his blog today, Seth writes about his decision. Here’s an excerpt:

Traditional book publishers use techniques perfected a hundred years ago to help authors reach unknown readers, using a stable technology (books) and an antique and expensive distribution system.... All a long way of saying that as the methods for spreading ideas and engaging with people keep changing, I can't think of a good reason to be on the defensive. It's been years since I woke up in the morning saying, "I need to write a book, I wonder what it should be about." Instead, my mission is to figure out who the audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works, even if it's not a traditionally published book.

Read Seth’s blog post in full.

In Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly), Ann Byle writes that "self-publishing was once the uninvited guest at the publishing table. But as technology advances and authors develop marketing savvy, first-time and even some experienced authors are turning more often to what many in the industry are calling custom publishing." Here's an excerpt:

Technically, "self-published" applies to any book the author pays to have published. But the lines are beginning to blur as companies such as the WinePress Group, Credo House, Brown Books Publishing Group (and its new Christian division), Creation House, and WestBow Press produce quality books that flow through traditional distribution channels and are edited, designed, and printed by professionals. Add to that the newest print-on-demand publishers such as CreateSpace and Gut Chuck Press, ebooks and their carriers, and companies that combine print-on-demand technology and online marketing savvy such as Pot-Boilers.

 

"We're turning the traditional publishing model on its head," says Tim Beals, owner and president of Credo House Publishing in Grand Rapids, Mich., which started in 2005. "Traditional publishers are stuck with one model, but we can do it all based on the author's abilities and our abilities."

Read the article in full.

On GreenBiz.com, Matthew Wheeland writes that, though the iPad is "a green device, it isn't a planet-saver." He refers to the New York Times op-chart "How Green Is My iPad?" which says

If you order a book online and have it shipped 500 miles by air, that creates roughly the same pollution and waste as making the book in the first place. Driving five miles to the bookstore and back causes about 10 times the pollution and resource depletion as producing it. You'd need to drive to a store 300 miles away to create the equivalent in toxic impacts on health of making one e-reader -- but you might do that and more if you drive to the mall every time you buy a new book.

Another opinion piece cited says the iPad is environmentally friendly only after 18 books are read on it. Read the full article.

Another sign of media convergence. The print edition of Entertainment Weekly has a video screen in it that plays clips from CBS television programs. Here's a report describing it:

Here's AdAge's report:

Mike Shatzkin's The Idea Logical blog responds to Nicholas Negroponte's controversial prediction that the printed book will be "dead" in five years; that is to say, the ebook will be the dominant form. Here's an excerpt of Shatzkin's post:

The critical thing to remember is that, indeed, the book was more-or-less perfected hundreds of years ago. There have been improvements in printing, binding, typography, and paper quality that are not trivial, but that also represent no quantum leap in user benefit. Indeed, defenders of the paper book and advocates suggesting it has a permanent role, point to that fact as support for their belief.

 

I think it argues the opposite.

 

The ebook, unlike the paper book, advances every month, if not every day. Screens and the reading platforms they run just keep improving: they get cheaper, lighter, more flexible, more capabilities-rich and there are ever more choices of them. Battery life gets longer. They develop the ability to take your notes, keyed in or handwritten. They develop the ability to share your notes or organize your notes automatically. They’ve had built-in dictionaries for a long time (a feature of the very first Kindle nearly three years ago) and now they often offer the ability to get to Wikipedia or a Google search in a click as well....

 

The biggest tipping point mechanisms for ebooks so far have been the advocacy by the three most important retailers of books (Amazon, B&N, and, less significantly so far but still important, Borders) for dedicated ereading devices; the ability of consumers to download books just about anytime directly into those devices; and, to my mind most important of all, the availability of just about all the most popular straight text books as ebooks at about the same time the content is available in print....

 

The printed book will not “die” in our lifetimes: there are too many of them already around for that. And I don’t even think the ebook will be “the dominant commercial form” (Negroponte’s position) in as short a time as five years. But it almost surely will in ten and I’d say that in no more than twenty the person choosing to read a printed book will not be unheard of or unknown, but will definitely qualify as “eccentric.”

Read this post in full.

Negroponte is best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and is the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). At the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA earlier this month, he made his startling prediction. Here's an excerpt from TechCrunch's coverage:

The physical book is dead, according to Negroponte. He said he realizes that’s going to be hard for a lot of people to accept. But you just have to think about film and music. In the 1980s, the writing was on the wall that physical film was going to die, even though companies like Kodak were in denial. He then asked people to think about their youth with music. It was all physical then. Now everything has changed.

 

By “dead,” he of course doesn’t mean completely dead. But he means that digital books are going to replace physical books as the dominant form.

Read the full report.

Dave Sheets is a business development consultant in publishing and printing. His post on the blog Innovation in Mission (@generousmind) speaks to the rise of ebooks and the resulting effect on printers. Here's an excerpt:

Digital books seem to be expanding the market according to some, while others say that the numbers show that ebooks are simply moving the reader from one platform to another. As the sales continue to climb, studies will help publishers understand which of these cases is actually true. But for now, Jon Makinson, the chief of Penguin Publishing shows his understanding of consumer behavior. "You have to give the consumer what the consumer wants – you can't tell the consumer to go away...if the consumer wants to buy a book in an electronic format now, you should let the consumer have it."

Read the post in full.

Jon Hirst (@generousmind) is co-founder of Generous Mind LLC,  a think tank helping thought leaders be generous with their ideas. In this guest post on Lessons from the Saddle, Jon explains that we're in

a liminal time - the doorway of a new era - governed by new rules. It's the Age of Context - an age defined by authentic communities in specific contexts that add value to each other in relationship. It is this new era that Twitter, Facebook, and other tools were created for. However, many people [including publishers] from the last era are bringing their assumptions from a past era to these communities and tools.

 

Many in publishing are entering into authentic conversations with generic sales pitches and slick marketing techniques. They're still living in modernity and creating/delivering products to consumers as if those rules still applied. So when they see new tools, they think they can set up a username and password or speak with the right words and get around the process of engaging in conversation and joining the community.

 

The challenge is that authenticity doesn’t come by association. You have to be an authentic participant in community to be accepted and given the right to share about your passions, vision, products, services, etc. And more importantly what you bring to the conversation must be a fit for that context.

Read this post in full.

In keeping with our earlier blog post this morning, here’s a quick explanation of the ways social media marketing is effective, from a post by Birdsong Creative (@birdsongcreativ), a graphic design and marketing communications agency. When you read this, recognize that “your business” as an author is your personal brand.

Why explore social networking options for your business? Simple:

Traditional Marketing is Losing Its Punch. People love to talk to each other. The one-way advertising speech from business to customer is over. The Internet has revolutionized buyer behavior and savvy businesses shouldn’t expect traditional marketing strategies to pull the influential punch it has in the past.

Your Customers are Online. You need to fish where the fishing is good. More and more, online communities are where you will find your customers and potential customers. Get cookin’ on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Yelp and find out what your target market is thinking, buying, and yes, even ranting about. Check out forums and groups for opinions and tailor your marketing message to the conversation.

Read this blog post in full.