So I've been doing some thinking really (just as a part of my normal day dreaming), and I started on a topic of the population of a country vs the market for certain products. I started thinking how this relates to things like books.
Now I have absolutely no training in economics or commerce, so I'm really saying this to see if anyone knows more about the topic and can point me in the direction of a resource.
So compare the US and Australia. The US has +320 million people, Australia has about 24 million. With an industry like publishing, it made sense to me that the US would publish 13 or so times the books that Australia does, given the greater population size.
But surely the industry in Australia isn't just a miniature version of the one in the US? I would think if one country published 10 times less than another, that would dramatically reduce the prevalence of niches. Say 0.05% of both Americans and Australians buy and read space operas (I'm obviously pulling that number totally out of the air). In America, that translates to 160,000 people. In Australia, however, it's only 12,000 people. So while its the same percentage, there are less Australians to buy them than Americans. Now clearly the operation could be scaled down, but there must be a floor were costs can't be reduced and its just not profitable because there aren't enough warm bodies to sell to (like, in an extreme example, if you lived in a country with 1,000 people, and 0.05% of people liked space operas, you'd only have a market of 5 people. It's not a scale a publisher could operate on, I would think).
So anyway, I'm really just rambling here, and asking if anyone knows more about this sort of thing. If anyone knows of anything they can point me to where I can learn more, that'd be appreciated.
Now I have absolutely no training in economics or commerce, so I'm really saying this to see if anyone knows more about the topic and can point me in the direction of a resource.
So compare the US and Australia. The US has +320 million people, Australia has about 24 million. With an industry like publishing, it made sense to me that the US would publish 13 or so times the books that Australia does, given the greater population size.
But surely the industry in Australia isn't just a miniature version of the one in the US? I would think if one country published 10 times less than another, that would dramatically reduce the prevalence of niches. Say 0.05% of both Americans and Australians buy and read space operas (I'm obviously pulling that number totally out of the air). In America, that translates to 160,000 people. In Australia, however, it's only 12,000 people. So while its the same percentage, there are less Australians to buy them than Americans. Now clearly the operation could be scaled down, but there must be a floor were costs can't be reduced and its just not profitable because there aren't enough warm bodies to sell to (like, in an extreme example, if you lived in a country with 1,000 people, and 0.05% of people liked space operas, you'd only have a market of 5 people. It's not a scale a publisher could operate on, I would think).
So anyway, I'm really just rambling here, and asking if anyone knows more about this sort of thing. If anyone knows of anything they can point me to where I can learn more, that'd be appreciated.
