BBC Radio 4’s business program The Bottom Line with Evan Davis (@EvanHD) recently (Feb. 9) focused on the sea changes occurring in the world of book publishing.
Like the music industry before it, the print book industry has been turned upside down up by the digital revolution. As sales of ebooks continue to grow, bookshop sales are down from a peak in 2007. So what does the future hold for the bricks-and-mortar bookstore? Will physical books become a thing of the past? And what role will traditional players like publishers, agents, and retailers play in this brave new world?
The program consists of Davis interviewing Jonny Geller, literary agent and joint CEO of Curtis Brown; Victoria Barnsley, CEO and publisher of HarperCollins UK and International; and Michael Tamblyn, Chief Content Officer at Toronto-based ebook retailer Kobo.
According to The Bookseller (@thebookseller), in the program, Barnsley says the idea of the bookshop as a book club, charging customers for “the privilege of browsing, is not that insane,” given the level of threat faced by the general bookshop. Certain shoeshops in the US are already charging customers to try on shoes, she noted.
Barnsley predicted that the level of digital ebook sales would “level off and end up being more like 50/50 [physical books and ebooks] for quite some time, if the physical bookshops survive.” But she said the survival of the physical bookshop was “the big question.” “Readers still do quite like physical books; the question is, will they be able to buy them, actually,” she told Davis.
Listen to this program in full.
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