A Major Shift in Book Publishing

February 29, 2012 By Dan Poynter

There is a major change going on in book publishing. Some publisher see it and are scared. Some are trying to change. Some do not even see it yet.

Eyeballs are moving from print to online. We see this in newspapers and magazines as well as books. Advertisers are following the eyeballs and are shifting their promotion money from print publications to the Web. Subscribers are reading online.

Newspapers are downsizing and going out of business. Magazines are closing down. The driving force is economics.

The old larger publishers have been the Big Six in New York. The new larger publishers will be Amazon, Apple, BarnesAndNoble.com, and Google. These resellers of information (nonfiction) and entertainment (fiction) are becoming publishers. They are inviting authors to cut out the publishers and deal directly with them.

Where is publishing going?

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Dan Poynter is "The Book Futurist." Read his blog at http://ParaPub.com.

Big Publishing’s Optimism About the Future is Tanking

Here’s a classic snapshot of an industry that is realizing its world is changing, that the big players may not survive and the people they employ don’t possess the skills necessary to compete in the new world.

The interesting thing about disruptive change is that it’s happened to lots of different industries before and the overall pattern is relatively predictable (although details and timing are not) but none of the top people in an industry being disrupted ever seem to believe it can happen to them. Denial is death under those circumstances.

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