The Annual Handwringing in the Bookselling Business
Posted on December 19, 2007
The L.A. Times has another article about the doom and gloom in the book business.
Even by the standards of the book world, 2007 saw more hand-wringing than usual, as well as some unexpected good news. The year was punctuated by anxiety over the decline of many newspaper book review sections and worry that publishing, with its old-fashioned way of printing books on paper and shipping them to stores or to online services, can't keep up with a fragmented, increasingly distracted and digital world.It's true that more independent bookstores are going out of business. But people are still reading lots of books -- it's the format that's changing. With the release of Amazon.com's ebook reader, the Kindle, the age of ubiquitous electronic book reading is a step closer. And speaking of the Kindle, it's temporarily sold out at Amazon.com. Although it retails for $399, people are selling them on Ebay for up to $1,500. Publishers who adapt to the new world of bookselling and media will do just fine.A flurry of bookstores, especially independents, fell victim to the chains, big-boxes and Amazon.com. In Southern California, that meant the shuttering of Dutton's Beverly Hills, Book Soup's Orange County branch, Anaheim's Book Baron and several beloved used-book stores. Leimert Park's Eso Won Books and Pacific Palisades' Village Books are hanging on by the skin of their teeth: Village owner Katie McLaughlin said she's waiting to see how holiday sales go before deciding whether next year will be her store's last.
And because of price discounts, the final installment of the Harry Potter series didn't give many stores the shot in the arm they were hoping for. Even literacy itself, according to a report by the National Endowment for the Arts, seems to be on a slow but steady decline. Add to this the destabilizing and ever-increasing pace of change. "It's one of those years -- they come along every once in a while -- where everyone worries and pulls their hair," said Marie Arana, editor of the Washington Post Book World.