- Joined
- Mar 19, 2005
- Messages
- 1,711
- Reaction score
- 936
Why would closing down even 20% of the market truly affect the CUSTOMERS? If they want books, they will buy books. Taking the stores away isn't going to stop them. Many of these stores are near competitors.
Because it's rare that a customer affects a book that's coming out inasmuch as distribution does. That's why it's going to affect things. Just about everything in publishing is based on how many copies you think stores will order. Lots of books move on sheer volume alone. Reduce that volume and you reduce everything across the board.
And while I agree that e-readers and Amazon/Book Depository/whoever will pick up some of the slack, there's still going to be a dip in print runs, and the according dip in advances. Mass Market is already seeing a hit because Wal-Mart recently decreased their orders by more than half of what they used to order. So now? Print runs are tumbling, which makes all MMPBs more expensive to produce, and publishers are cutting back their MMPB lines to accomodate for this. If you can only promote one book, and the stores only want two of them, what's the point of putting out 5 every month?
It's just going to keep contracting.
I'm not trying to be all gloom and doom, but it's definitely going to affect the industry. Will it kill it? Probably not. But it will change a lot of things, I think.