Too Many Writers, Not Enough Readers?

Here's an interesting article from the blogger from Writer's Write:

Are there too many writers and not enough readers? Rachel Donadio crunches the numbers.

"It's well established that Americans are reading fewer books than they used to. A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn't read a book in the previous year -- a state of affairs that has prompted much soul-searching by anyone with an affection for (or business interest in) turning pages. But even as more people choose the phantasmagoria of the screen over the contemplative pleasures of the page, there's a parallel phenomenon sweeping the country: collective graphomania.

In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. University writing programs are thriving, while writers' conferences abound, offering aspiring authors a chance to network and "workshop" their work. The blog tracker Technorati estimates that 175,000 new blogs are created worldwide each day (with a lucky few bloggers getting book deals). And the same N.E.A. study found that 7 percent of adults polled, or 15 million people, did creative writing, mostly "for personal fulfillment."

In short, everyone has a story -- and everyone wants to tell it. Fewer people may be reading, but everywhere you turn, Americans are sounding their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world, as good old Walt Whitman, himself a self-published author, once put it. "As publishing has become less expensive, the urge to write my own self has become the opportunity to publish my own self," said Gabriel Zaid, a Mexican critic and the author of So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, a meditation on literary life in an over-booked world. Today, he added, "Everyone now can afford to preach in the desert."

We don't think there are too many writers, not by a long shot. It's a difficult thing just to finish a novel, let alone get it published. It is true that not all writers are of equal quality, but it's always been that way. And we're just not buying the Steve Jobs premise that people aren't reading as much or don't like to read as much.

Harry Potter proved that millions of children will read books when they have something to read that they really love. Many forget the conventional wisdom of the day (before J.K. Rowling appeared on the scene): that children's books could never generate the kind of sales that adult titles could. That turned out to be a myth. The same is true of the doom and gloom crowd today that claim that reading is on the way out.

05/31/08 3:34am

Kindle Helps Tiny E-book Market

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National WriterThu Apr 3, 3:13 PM ET

More than four months after Amazon.com released the Kindle, no one is sure whether the latest e-book reader is really hot — or not. But publishers believe that the Kindle has helped, if not revolutionized, the tiny electronic market.

Amazon.com has received extensive media coverage since unveiling the Kindle on the Monday before Thanksgiving and announcing that the first run had sold out within a few hours. Amazon.com has declined to give sales figures for the Kindle — at least 2,000, judging from the number of customer reviews — but has said repeatedly that supply is not keeping up with demand, with the device often out of stock.

Publishing officials are reluctant to discuss sales figures, but say that they have seen double digit increases in e-book sales since the Kindle's release, including renewed interest in downloads on the Sony Reader. Sales for the most popular books are in the hundreds, comparable to the number for the Sony, which came out in 2006.

"The Kindle has increased awareness. Publishers have told me that in some cases the Sony numbers were double or triple to what they had been," says Michael Smith, head of the International Digital Publishing Forum, which tracks e-book sales.

Selling through Amazon.com for $399, Kindle is thinner than most paperbacks and weighs 10.3 ounces. It can hold some 200 books, along with newspapers, magazines and an entire dictionary.

The Kindle has been praised for its selection, more than 100,000 books, blogs and newspapers, and for the speed of delivery, less than a minute. Fans include such authors as Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, Michael Lewis and Neil Gaiman.

In a review last November, AP technology writer Peter Svensson called the Kindle in "some ways an amazing device," citing its full-alphabet keyboard and "rudimentary Web browser that allows you to surf for free." But he also noted several flaws, including "its poor battery life, making it hard to see it as a game-changer."

Publishing is older by centuries than the music and film industries and its form of communication, the paper text, has proved far more durable than the vinyl record, eight-track tape or videocassette. New technologies, from the compact disc to the DVD, are usually more convenient and more effective than the ones they replace. But no e-book device has approached the practical and aesthetic appeal of the traditional book.

"Books themselves are very efficient machines, and the experience of holding a book is part of the book culture," says Farrar, Straus & Giroux publisher Jonathan Galassi, who called the Kindle "flimsy" and said it reminded him of an Etch-a-Sketch toy.

"E-books are a growing niche for now," Smith says, "but I certainly don't see a time when everybody will be reading them. People just love what the traditional book represents to them."

E-books undeniably are growing. According to the International Digital Publishing Forum, sales have risen steadily over the past six years, from around $6 million in 2002 to around $33 million in 2007. Those numbers do not include many smaller publishers, or library and educational purchases, making it likely — Smith and others believe — that the market for downloads is at least two or three times larger.

Each advance inevitably leads to speculation about a post-paper world: Would bookstores become obsolete? How would publishers handle online piracy? Would authors, like some musicians, become their own bosses, bypassing the industry altogether?

E-books have been around for more than a decade and speculation peaked in 2000-2001, the height of the dot.com boom. Several publishing houses set up e-book divisions, and an annual e-book prize, a $50,000 award co-sponsored by Microsoft, was started. Even Barnes & Noble, Inc. formed its own e-book line, launching the brand with an original work by Dean Koontz.

The electronic future, bookseller Michael Powell of Powell's Books said in 2000, was "coming down the road at lightning speed."

Few are so bold anymore. Even after tripling their reported sales, e-books are less than 1 percent of the $35 billion publishing business and likely to remain so. The e-book divisions have been shut down, the e-book award no longer exists. Barnes & Noble has abandoned the e-book field.

"The market is very narrowly confined, to New York and Seattle and to a few people who travel and read a lot," says Frank Daniels III, chief operating officer for Ingram Digital, a leading e-distributor.

"The Kindle is certainly an important next step, but I don't think it signifies the end of the evolution," Smith says. "It's all incremental, one step that takes place down the line, like in the audiobook industry."

E-books have made their greatest progress with their first audience: publishers. For years, publishers resisted the product they were supposed to be pushing. In a 2001 interview, the head of the Association of American Publishers, Patricia Schroeder, rolled her eyes when asked about e-book devices: "I just look at these things and they're fine, but I just think ... "

In a recent AP interview, Schroeder spoke favorably of e-books, but said she still had not read one.

Public sightings of e-books remain rare compared to iPods or iPhones, but e-book readers have caught on in the industry. The Hachette Book Group USA, Simon & Schuster and Random House, Inc. are among those using Sony Readers (which sell for $299) to review manuscripts and executives are far more likely to say they've read an e-book.

"It's not a conversation I'm having with people outside the industry, but I think people will increasingly use e-books. They'll be a niche, like audiobooks. I think that's the best comparison," says Jonathan Karp, publisher of the Hachette imprint, Twelve.

"I actually read in bed with the Sony e-reader, and I love it. It's lighter than a regular book, and easier to turn the pages than with a manuscript. I don't have to lug books back and forth. I'm saving paper. It's wonderful."