Requiem for Traditional Book Publishing in Crain's New York

From Crain's New York Business: Another requiem for dead-tree publishing, paired with a great discussion of Jane Friedman, her Open Road, and another interesting start-up, Dale Peck's Mischief and Mayhem.

... Apple's iPad, Barnes & Noble's Nook and new iterations of the Kindle have accelerated the e-book revolution, which is undermining traditional publishing's economics with lower prices than those for hardcover books. It's also threatening the foundation of the business: the humble brick-and-mortar bookstore.

Several weeks ago, Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore chain, did the unthinkable and put itself up for sale. Independent bookstores, whose ranks have diminished by about half since 2000, continue to close.
The end of bookstores could be the final nail in the coffin for traditional publishing. The big trade houses rely on acres of shelves to sell their wide-ranging titles, from literary and commercial fiction to nonfiction that doesn't have a news hook or a celebrity's name on the cover.

And the end could come sooner than many people think. E-book sales have tripled in the past year, and now make up 8.5% of publishers' revenue. They'll hit 50% by 2015, according to Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of The Idea Logical Co.

At that point, the few stores left standing will sell just a quarter of all physical books, down from around three-quarters today, and big publishers will “come under threat,” he says. “Their value is based on delivering distribution.

... Through May, overall net sales for hardcover books totaled $713 million—a bump over last year's numbers but a decline of 19% from the same period in 2007, according to the Association of American Publishers.

“The hope is that e-book sales will balance out the decline in physical book sales,” says Jack Perry, a former Random House sales chief who consults on digital issues for publishers. “That hasn't happened yet.” ...

Indie Lit Experiment: Sometimes That Happens With Chicken

Indie author and publisher Wanda Shapiro is giving her novel Sometimes That Happens with Chicken away as a downloadable PDF, and selling the self-published paperback, ala indie musicians and also such writers as Cory Doctorow, using a model of the type I blogged about here. Check out Wanda's book and her concept.

Former Lulu Exec Launches Outer Banks Publishing

From Publishers Weekly's Calvin Reid:

Anthony Policastro, a former business analyst at self-publishing vendor Lulu.com, has launched the Outer Banks Publishing Group, a new publishing venture that will focus on digital publishing and the use of social media to build an audience for POD print releases.

Outer Banks Publishing offers a different model than Lulu.com. Policastro said OBP is not a self-publishing vendor like Lulu, but a hybrid publishing model that combines selective editorial content with new media publishing and promoting platforms. Policastro said he solicits manuscripts like a traditional publisher and is selective about what he publishes. However, OBP does not offer advances. Instead, Policastro says he offers writers the chance to publish their books in e-book format and his experience and expertise in using a wide variety of social media and viral marketing strategies and technologies to promote and market the book online.

His plan is to publish books initially in e-book format; create buzz on the Internet through social media and then move to POD print publication when the initial e-book edition has “proven itself” by generating digital book sales. Outer Banks, Policastro said, will show its authors how to create a significant web presence with blog tours, web sites, blogs and web optimization.”

A former magazine editor and blogger as well as a novelist—he has self-pubbed two novels of his own through Outer Banks—Politcastro said he is about to publish an updated edition of Martin Brossman’s Social Media and Online Resource Directory for Business, and is currently considering several manuscripts for publication.

According to Politcastro, “The publishing industry is moving too slow to adapt these new technologies,” and that Outer Banks is “bridging the gap between authors and publishers and getting more authors in print.”

Outer Banks and my New Street Communications are both aimed at bridging the same gap, although at New Street we'll make digital and POD editions available simultaneously. We'll also focus less on over-the-transom manuscripts and more on titles developed and commissioned in-house. Plus New Street is exclusively nonfiction.