Last month we brought you Why the print book won't die, part one. In the second part of our series on the print book and why it won't be going away any time soon, we talk with David Sax, the author of the new book, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter.
With the recent resurgence of brick-and-mortar bookstores and the plateauing of ebook sales, David sees a bright future ahead for physical books and the people who love them.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
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Transcript
David Sax: When I got my first Kindle in 2009, I think or 2008, you know, that was it. I was, like, I don't think I've touched another book on paper for two years. And then I started reading paper books again when I was doing research on this book. And I was getting books in the library that I didn't want to buy on Kindle, and I just wanted to read...you know, I needed to read 10 pages of and then take back.
And I found the experience of reading a book on paper so much more enjoyable for reasons that, yes, seems silly and archaic, but that's, as a human being, what I respond to. That's the way my brain responds to, you know, something printed in the physical world versus, you know, on e-ink or screen. And now, my Kindle sits on my desk. I don't think I've charged it in two years.
Zalina Alvi: Welcome to the "BookNet Canada" podcast. I'm your host, Zalina Alvi. And this is part two of our series on the print book and why it's not going away any time soon. After several years of quick growth, ebook sales in the Canadian market have been holding steady at about 17% of market share versus print and audiobooks for the last year or two.
So instead of digital overtaking print, despite the fears of many, we're now living in a world where readers switch between formats depending on their needs and circumstances. And where it's not uncommon for buyers to borrow ebooks and buy print books, or download the audiobook, then buy the ebook of the same title or any other combination of these options.
To help us probe the mysteries of why the print book hasn't been, well, relegated to a footnote in the history books, we've invited David Sax to share his thoughts on this month's episode. David is the author of the new book, "The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter."
And while he agrees that every format has its own particular benefits, he says there's nothing quite like a physical book that you can pick up and hold in your own hands. For that reason, and others that he's researched for his book, he's predicting a bright future for both printed books and brick-and-mortar bookstores.
David: I mostly look at the world of book publishing through retail. I have a chapter called "The revenge of retail," and it essentially looks at sort of the revenge of the brick-and-mortar bookstore, the independent brick-and-mortar bookstore, most specifically in the United States, focusing on bookstores that have opened up in New York City over the past couple of years, specifically, this one called Book Culture, which opened its third location just two years ago in the Upper West Side.
And really, this was sort of the first new bookstore in the Upper West Side in, I think, at least over a decade, in a neighbourhood that's really sort of the heart of the New York publishing community. One where I think people had really assumed that the independent bookstore couldn't survive. They actually opened up in the same retail space that decades before had been a store called Endicott Books.
And Endicott Books had served as the inspiration for Nora Ephron when she was writing the Tom Hanks movie, or Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film, "You've Got Mail," which you might remember as Meg Ryan is the owner of this charming independent bookstore fighting to survive against the kind of big Barnes & Noble competitor that's opening around the corner, and there is a few blocks away, a big Barnes & Noble that exists on Broadway.
And so this is kind of, you know, the chapter, really, through the lens of what they've done and then other bookstores that have opened up around New York City in recent years, kind of looks at what, you know, "Here's this species of analogue retailers selling the most analogue of good books that everyone assumed would just be gone," right.
And there was this great period of decline of independent bookstores, and then sort of even bigger bookstores, first in the face of changing consolidation in the '80s and '90s with the expansion of Borders, and Barnes & Noble, and Indigo and White Stones in the UK. And then from '95 onward, with the launch of Amazon out of Seattle, the kind of dominance of e-commerce.
And I think that there was this assumption for such a long time that, you know, opening a bookstore would have been an utter impossibility, and to actually succeed in it and make money would have been as well. And I think also people thought that the same thing that happened to music was sort of the rise of the mp3 was eventually gonna to happen to printed books with ebooks and tablets. And what we've seen is, is quite the opposite. And there is growth in the bookstore market.
So if you'd look at the figures from the American Booksellers Association, which is sort of a trade group of affiliated independent bookstores, not every independent bookstore, but let's say the majority in the United States, they have talked about their numbers growing from sort of 2009 to this year, of 30%. So that's, you know, the number of bookstore, independent bookstores that have opened and also, you know, consistent growth of sales of books and other merchandise that they carry along that same time.
And that's interesting, because, you know, at the same time, you're seeing these sort of large chains, like Chapters Indigo and Barnes & Noble, you know, seeing consistently declining sales and declining revenues, even though their selling is centered at the same products.
Zalina: So can you tell me some of the theories you've come up with for why people continue to buy print books in physical stores? I mean, is there a psychological reason, something about human behavior? I mean, what is it exactly?
David: I think it's a combination of a number of things. I mean, I think the first thing we have to remember is that, you know, going to a store to buy books or even buying books is not 100% a logical kind of pure consumer purchase, right? You know, if you buy the digital Kindle edition or Kobo edition of the "Revenge of Analog," or even download the audiobook, the content, the words in it, the ideas, what I write is the exact same as if you bought the hardcover for 35 bucks in Canada, 28 bucks in the US.
So why would people go and do that? Why would they go out of their way to a store and buy it for more money, you know, the full price than going to Amazon or some other online retailer and buying it for 30% or less, right, 30% less or even less than that? And it comes down to, you know, what a bookstore is and what sort of books are.
Books are a consumer product that are not toilet paper. As much as we think they're essential, they are, in many ways, a luxury good, and a aspirational product that kind of gets at the heart of middle-class-consumer capitalism, right. You have to be smart to read books, you have to be educated to read books, whether you're talking about books for children, whether you're talking about 300-page hardcover nonfiction books, like what I write. And there is a feeling of sort of self-worth that people get when they go to a bookstore.
And I think that's something that, unfortunately, is not replicable in an e-commerce experience. An e-commerce experience is, you know, for the best delivery of sort of price and selection, but you don't get the ability of browsing, you don't get a sense of neighbourhood, a sense of place, a sense of kind of exoticism there. When you go to a great bookstore or a neighbourhood bookstore, you're getting a sense of community in many ways.
And so people are willing to pay more for that, especially because they saw the decline of that. And many neighbourhoods saw the loss of their neighbouring bookstores over the previous decades. And so now that new entrepreneurs are opening up new bookstores, the communities have been willing to support them because they've seen what it's like without them.
Zalina: So what would you say to someone who says ebooks are the way of the future, that, I mean, there are just so many benefits, particularly for accessibility and the lower costs associated with producing them, that will eventually outweigh any of the luxuries and advantages of print books?
David: I would say, yeah, sure. Of course, like, those advantages are here and they're not going away. And the technology might improve even more to make the, you know, online or digital-reading experience better. But at the same time, that's only going to take the advantages that a print book has and increase their value in the eyes of those who love them, right.
So, as it becomes more digitally disseminated, and, you know, brought in from the cloud, you won't even own your books, the books that you do own are going to be the ones that you really care about. The tactile nature of them, the way you display them in shelves in your home, again, is an advantage in a way that isn't replicable online. And so, you know, it's not a one or the other. It is both, right.
There are people who read fiction in print and nonfiction, digitally. It's similar to the argument of saying, "Well, now that we all have libraries, we don't need bookstores," right? But, you know, people use the different technologies and different services in different ways.
And I think as long as there are people out there who like to read and enjoy whatever aspect of a print book that they enjoy, whether it's the design, whether it's the weight of it, whether it's the ability to display in their house, whether it's the ability to go into a retailer and actually interact with people and buy it or get it signed by an author, right, there's gonna be a market for that.
The market is not going to be, you know, like it was 25 years ago, because things have changed, but it doesn't mean that it's just going to disappear.
Zalina: Well in that case, do you think that print books will continue to become these luxury items that are bought in fewer numbers by people who really prefer them and see the value in collecting them, and as a result, will they grow more and more expensive?
David: I think that is something that is kind of the nature of the publishing business, right. And so they look at the numbers that they're doing, and they have to adjust accordingly. But that said, I mean, it's not as though the numbers have declined so dramatically in terms of sales of books that there's been this plummeting of value in it.
And I think, yeah, as, you know, it remains or it settles into sort of a niche of, let's say, hardcover books, and who buys them, you know, if that group will support more expensive books that are printed on better paper and look nicer than that, you know, the publishers will go there if the mass market paperback or the trade paperback, the less-expensive option is the one that works for them, and the market wants that, then they'll sort of go that way.
But, you know, publishers, I mean, they'll do anything, right. They'll do different things for different titles. They'll do different editions for different parts of the market. And they'll do whatever sells, I think it's...you know, it's not as though people are saying, "Well, you know, I'm gonna... The difference between a $20 book and a $30 book, you know, that $10 is really the price difference for me." I think, again, it's kind of, "Do I want this book in paper or do I not care?"
Zalina: Okay, so, what changes do you think would need to happen in the future in terms of available resources, society, technology, human behaviour, for the trade market to go entirely digital, like, can you picture that at all? Is there anything that could happen that would make that seem more possible to you?
David: I don't foresee that, and I think it's because, you know, it comes down to what we want out of books and what we want as consumers. I mean, listen, the ebooks have been around for the better part of a decade, right. And it would have happened by now, but the fact is it's still a relatively small percentage of sales, especially on mass-market fiction and nonfiction books.
So it's not as though there's a technological impediment to it. And the fact is, you know, the things that people love about paper books are the inherent qualities of them. So unless, you know, a digital book is going to somehow be simulated on some fake dead tree, I don't really foresee that it's gonna go away entirely. I mean, unless paper stops being produced or something else.
But again, I think it's...we were at that point, right. We've had that thing, and people have...the consumers have spoken, and it's not out of any reluctance to adopt the new technology, it's out of realizing what they enjoy about real books. And so as long as people are saying that, then the market is going to...the book industry is gonna respond by selling them real books because that's what they want.
Zalina: Thanks to David for joining me on this month's episode. If you're interested in more research and analysis of the book market in Canada, you can find free reports, infographics, and more at booknetcanada.ca. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for this project. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
