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Full article: https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/2021/04/18/books/book-sal...

I honestly don't see why this is much of a problem? Does the book industry truly need hypebeasts to survive? 4% of your market buying the same paperback in some mass hysteria moment is not sustainable, that's just not how physical books work. Diversity in literature is a good thing, people reading different things is a good thing.

The book industry (much like many content industries) has always been hit driven. The issue this article is bringing up is the way they diversified that a little and found new hits was via old fashioned on the ground bookstores.

We now have pretty empirical proof that the algorithm driven sales via online and big retail sales channels make the industry more hit driven and less diverse.

The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback? After a 20 year decline the stores had stabilized in recent years but the pandemic wrecked them. Too soon to tell but I’m pessimistic for their future, which makes me worry about publishing long term.

> The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback?

No. The tax break went on for too long, and that online bookstore became a global near-monopoly on all physical items the size of a coffee table or smaller. Before that, traditional bookstores had already been slammed by grocery-store sized bestseller warehouse chains - the more than a decade long state subsidy to internet retailers actually killed those.

I’m suspicious that unique content is something that consumers intrinsically value. While the first round of game of thrones is fun, the 5th clone gets pretty old.

The question is how do we algorithmically boost unique content without bringing along junk content.

The book industry was not hit driven and it which was more profitable in the early 1960s when the book industry was owned by people who were good at publishing.

By the mid-1960's every petroleum and electronics conglomerate had capital that it couldn't put back in its own business, so they started buying other businesses, and publishers were a popular target.

Once the publishers were controlled by people who were motivated by money they tried to make more of it but in the process profitability dropped, sometimes below zero.

Brick and mortar bookstores I’ve seen that have done well usually have something to keep patrons coming in the door regularly, like live events for the community or a cafe that sells coffee and snacks to consume while leafing through a book.

Or they diversify into other fields like stationery where people actually prefer buying them in person sometimes.

A related read to your question: https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/opening-smal...
> The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback?

Some never stopped. Powell's (physical) bookstore in Portland is bigger than most city libraries I've been in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell%27s_Books

> but the pandemic wrecked them

Everything I've read indicates bookstores have done phenomenally well during the pandemic

Power law exists in every industry and the profits from the top sellers do indeed fund the long-tail.

This is true of music, books, art, everything.

The hits will always be present, and this is OK so long as the underlying businesses continue to invest in the long tail to fund the next generation of writers.

The publishers usually survive because of the income generated by large bestsellers. This income is what pays for the books that end up not selling well. The vast majority of books don't sell much, so without the popular books, publishers can't afford to publish.

There are many publishers today whose whole operation is basically funded by two or three authors that sell really well. Those earnings offload the cost and losses of the other books.

Is the article saying that's a problem? If there is a problem it's a form of life being destroyed ("Publishers now worry about the long-term health of physical bookstores"). Reminds me of my father taking me to the local VHS rental place when I was a kid. That's gone now. Bookstores could easily follow.

Of course these changes happen due to consumer decisions. It's creative destruction and I wouldn't want to live in a static society. But for people who are attached to the thing that's disappearing, it's a little sad. I've discovered authors by mistake in bookstores. I use Amazon and Alibris all the time but it's not the same as a bookstore.

4% of your market buying the same paperback in some mass hysteria moment is not sustainable, that's just not how physical books work.

That's exactly how physical books work. It's always been this way. All media is a hit driven business with a long tail (perhaps with the exception of film which doesn't have much of a long tail).

Well you're talking about publishers. But what author can afford to write for months on end, if they only sell 1k copies at £5 each? (I don't know what percentage of that actually reaches the author after publishing)
Just install the Bypass Paywalls extension:

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

(works on Firefox too)

Power law distribution of popularity, attention, wealth, and success.

There are many important, insightful, landmark works that languish in obscurity.

How many people read Chalmers Johnson or Bartolomé de las Casas? Heck, how many people even read all six volumes of Edward Gibbon's anymore?

Popularity doesn't really matter unless you're trying to eek out a living with copy. I wouldn't count on becoming rich, or even comfortable, as a writer unless you're a public figure or celebrity already, or know one.

Too eek out a living is to be a character actor specializing in expressions of surprise.

To eke out a living is to supplement with great effort for only incremental gains.

To kee out a living is to release an Indian Tamil-language techno-thriller.

Gibbon might not be the best example, his writing style is very hard to read because most of his books were written in the 16th century.

I agree with you in spirit though. Most people are reading shit.

The most famous Edward Gibbon published his main work on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century, and the writing style is famously conversational and informal, especially in the extensive footnotes. It's not at all difficult to read. Though it certainly is long.
It's also, er, mostly _wrong_. Gibbon might be an interesting thing for someone to read, but it shouldn't be taken at all seriously as history.
18th Century. It's completely readable, as are many other works written at the same time, such as Boswell's Life of Johnson.

As for the 16th (and early 17th) century - Shakespeare?

And why is this a problem? I write niche books on topics that really interest me, and if I write a book that a few thousand people buy [1], and perhaps fifty readers engage with me via email, social media, or a phone call, then I am totally satisfied.

[1] I recently made all of my recent books free downloads at my personal web site https://markwatson.com so the situation is now even better: a huge number of downloads, and increased engagement with readers.

I am a big fan of 'C++ Power Paradigms', although it does make me kind of insufferable when talking to people who bring up 'recent advances in AI'. Thanks for writing it all those years ago, it opened my eyes to there being more to programming than reversing linked lists and figuring out widget layout errors.
The article's focus is fiction. Writing a good novel (not pulp) can easily take years. Royalties on a few thousand copies sold are not reasonable or sustainable compensation for that kind of effort.
I think most writers want an income they can live off.
I think Nassim Taleb does a good job talking about this in his books. In essence, more and more of things that exist in the world follow a power series distribution where as this wasn’t the case in the past. We today live in the world of “Extremistan” where it’s winner take most.

In fact I think he uses book sales as an example of this today.

That's globalization and, in the "intellectual property" area: 1) the ability to record & duplicate things in the first place—being able to play the piano tolerably well is worth basically nothing now, socially or commercially, which wasn't the case before radio & recorded music became common, for example, and 2) ever-decreasing costs of duplication.

Vonnegut treated of this in more than one of his books. He seemed to regard the effect as likely more socially destructive than it was net-beneficial.

Yup. He explains this well in Black Swan.
Assuming some kind of long tail, then this just means they're giving slightly more risky authors a chance just in case any becomes the next JK or whatever. Is this a bad thing?

I'm sure most authors would rather their work was published, even if it only sold a few thousand.

Agreed. I also wonder if we underestimate or undervalue when thousands of people pay for and read your material. (Many of those books won't sell close to 5k copies, but that's the bar the article set.)
It's the same with actors, artists, painters, atheletes... you name it.
Right. It's a property of winner-take-all pursuits where the maximum scale is at the unit of the individual and the product can be replicated for low marginal cost. It's especially magnified when it's a common passion pursuit since that increases the supply of people doing it. It's a recipe for an extremely large long-tail.
"Books about [...] practical, domestic tasks like cooking were were in high demand and drove nonfiction sales. Nonfiction titles for kids grew more than 23 percent as parents turned to books to educate their homebound children."

I mean...I'm not surprised? The pandemic forced a lot of folks to stay home so I would imagine they would be interesting in learning new domestic tasks, such as cooking. And if a lot of kids were forced to be remote learning as well, that seems like a logical extension that parents would get involved too.

In the cookbook world, it seems that nearly everyone has a cookbook, so seeing a general cookbook (i.e. it has a lot of different recipes to try) with a couple of well known people (Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewert) would seem like a safe bet to purchase.

That being said....I would honestly pass on “From Crook to Cook”. I got it as a holiday present, and I tried a couple of recipes. A lot of the recipes were very off the mark for how to do things, which honestly surprised me considering it was written with Martha Stewert.

The one that sticks out to me is a cimmamon bun recipe I tried in it. One of the (many) problems was the recipe only called for one rise, and IIRC it was after you already shaped the buns in the pan. They did not have a first rise (before shaping) then a proofing stage (after shaping), which I just added because I knew to do that. I had to modify the recipe in several ways and by the end it just was a different recipe. (if you are interested in baking, I highly suggest https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes . I have their cookbook, and it is a fantastic resource).

Did you try the recipes as presented? I can understand that an introductory cookbook shortcuts recipes for the sake of simplicity; and I wouldn't find it fair to recommend a more advanced resource unless the intro recipes give results so bad that they're offputting.
That is called the long tail, right?
So are they are very bad at picking winners? What about the Top 5% of publishers, what's their hit rate I wonder?
Article does not provide older numbers for comparison but implies that this represents an acceleration of earlier trends:

> Unlike the serendipitous sense of discovery that comes with browsing a bookstore, people tend to search by author or subject matter when they shop online, limiting the titles they see. Often, they see whatever a search or algorithm delivers, or find themselves steered toward titles that retailers push because they are already selling well. As a result, many of the new books that were released in 2020 languished, as panicked retailers focused on brand-name authors and readers gravitated toward the most popular titles.

Hasn't this always been the case? 1000 copies sold is seen as pretty ok for a first time author. It's kind of the same as with musical artists.
No, historically most of these books would simply not be published; the publisher would make a run only if they believe they can sell a larger quantity - and they had more means (more control over distribution and marketing) to ensure that they sell most of what they printed even if it turned out to be not so popular.
So basically when people who don't read are forced to read because of lockdowns, they pick books written by people they've heard of? I don't see how that necessarily signals a long term trend- do people really believe that long term reading habits will change because you read a celebrity cookbook during lockdown?
I believe the music industry is about the same, or close.

That said, the music industry (afaik) no longer offers mega-advances, etc. How does the book industry do so? That said, if you're a sure bet (e.g., former POTUS) why not self-publish and keep more for yourself / foundation?

Long tail: if you want a nice intro of the topic, "fooled by randomness" is a fun read.
Publishers insisting on DRM for ebooks means that once I buy into one ecosystem (Amazon's Kindle is the biggest), then that's where I'll probably stay. The publishers are giving away an enormous amount of power by requiring DRM.
And 98% of the books sold were never opened!
Why was the title changed to a single line from the article? Isn’t that in violation of the HN guidelines for submission?
“And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules. Welcome to HN, Miss Turner!”
The original title is terrible, in which case it's sometimes changed to something more descriptive.