French publisher predicts end of hardback books

Yesterday the Financial Times published an article about how Arnaud Nourry, CEO of French publishing group Hachette Livre, the world’s second largest publisher, lashed out at Google, Amazon and ebook retailers, stating that ebooks will, essentially, rip the bottom out of the publishing industry and kill hardback books.

This is not a terribly new argument. Since Amazon came out with the first Kindle publishers have been freaking out about how ebooks will  be the end of the industry.

I can understand why, but I’m not sure I buy it. Yes, publishers are going to have to radically and drastically change the way they do business. Authors will have to work harder to drive book sales. Out of copyright books now have a greater opportunity than ever before to compete with newly published volumes.

This doesn’t signal the death of an industry. Not at all. Rather it’s a significant change–one that was inevitable with the technology advances of our age. We’ve been predicting this day for decades. I mean, come on, just take a look at the original Star Trek to see Kirk holding slim tablets to read books and reports.

I understand the worries of authors and publishers. After all I hope to be selling my book in a year or so and I can’t imagine I’ll be excited about the prospect of a small advance or a complete lack of an advance. But I really do believe it is just a blip as the publishing industry re-invents itself. After all, it pretty much has to. People will never stop reading books. How they read it will change but there will always be people desperate for the next Harry Potter-like phenomenon or the new Dan Brown novel.

On the Slate Big Money blog, Marion Maneker argues that the real problem with publishers is not that they are seeing new book sales slowing…it’s the sale of backlist books. Some of that, I imagine, could be due to better accessibility of public domain books. I know that I’ll probably be unlikely to go out and buy a Jane Austen novel when I can just download it into my Kindle for free.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t buy hard copies of new books. I do, and a lot of them, despite the fact that I buy just as many ebooks for my Kindle. I collect signed first editions. Some books aren’t well suited to digital format. Some books I just want to own and keep on my shelves.  I think this true of most people who own ebook readers. We’re all going to keep buying physical books…but what types of books we’re buying is definitely changing.

That said, I don’t think that hardbacks are going to fall by the wayside anytime soon. It just might mean that it isn’t where publishers will make the bulk of their money. There will always be a collector’s market.  I can still buy brand new vinyl LPs, for example. It’s going to be a very long time before physical books go away.

It might mean market consolidation. It might mean creating systems to take a cut off of enhanced downloads or on-demand publishing machines. It might mean going the way of what really helped DVD sales take off–adding bonus content that people will pay extra for (interviews, maps, short stories, etc.).  No one likes change, but when publishers begin to see this as an incredible opportunity instead of the end of an era, it will truly be an exciting new aspect for the future of books.

Speaking of Dan Brown, Knopf Doubleday is hoping that ebook sales will go through the roof when his latest novel is released this month. It’s exciting to see a publisher with a fresh look toward the future:

The technology that allows readers to read books on a handheld screen is improving just at the moment Brown’s The Lost Symbol hits the streets. For Rickett, the possibilities, including books with scored soundtracks and video inserts, are just becoming clear.

I will never want to give up the idea of reading over viewing content, but I would LOVE to have some of my books enhanced with material that would make the book come alive. Interactive maps where you can see where your characters live, photos of places, creatures, situations, creepy music that starts up just as a scary scene in the book occurs…I can see how all of that could make books all the more exciting.

Arnaud Nourry is not quite wrong, but he’s really not right. This is just the beginning of an interesting and exciting revolution in the way the world acquires, accesses and interacts with the novel and the authors of the novel.  It will be a story of the survival of the fittest. And with Nourry’s attitude, he might as well start preparing to sink back into the mud from whence he came. Others will walk right over him as the publishing world evolves.

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• World’s Second Largest Publisher: $9.99 eBooks Will Kill Hardcover Books (readwriteweb.com)
• Book publishers myopic as they claim e-books will destroy books (inquisitr.com)
• Dan Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol to usher in ebook revolution (telegraph.co.uk)
• Electronic revolution for books (guardian.co.uk)
• French open war against Google, Amazon (openitstrategies.com)
• Barnes & Noble Finds New Revenue Streams (marketingvox.com)
• Ebook of The Lost Symbol to be Released Simultaneously With Hardcover (readersread.com)

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