Friday, May 17, 2019

The Problem With Going Digital In Publishing

When we first started shifting over to digital publishing, I, along with a lot of other people had some serious doubts. Was this a good move? Will this improve the publishing industry, or would it create some problems (or a lot of problems). Now that we are well into this "go all digital" movement, I am personally seeing a lot of problems that A) we should have seen coming; and B) we better find a solution for.

I was recently talking to one of my authors about her marketing for her latest book. She, like I am sure many other authors are finding, is that getting the news out there about her book was tough. She spends a lot of time promoting each of her books, with, I should add, a lot of support from her publisher. But here is the problem. Since all of her marketing now has to be done digitally, it means that ONLY those people who already now about her writing and her novels, will get those marketing announcements.

If you think about it, how are people to "find you" as you post things on social media or your blogs. It all has to be 100% word of mouth, and, in reality, this is a closed system. It will still only be your friends who hear about you.

In the past, when we had bookstores, we "discovered" new authors as we wandered the bookstore. The managers of the story would pile up new releases on tables. As you browsed the shelves for "your author" you find other titles and other authors who you had never heard of.

Sure, Amazon and the other online bookstores will post "here is what other people bought" but these algorithms are still only looking at a limited amount of data, and most of that is still only looking at your personal preferences.

Try this some time. Get on Amazon and go to your favorite genre. I would recommend looking for "Kindle Editions" for your genre. Now, sort those from Lowest to Highest in price and start scanning. I have done this in the past and frankly, I can find over 300+ books, all free and never find anything. There are that many authors out there flooding the market. Each of those people might have a marketing plan, but have you even heard of these people? Probably not.

Now, here is the next huge issue. Authors who dive into digital only releases often find the same trend. When their book is released and the publishers flood their market with the campaign, there is a spike in sales. After that, the next round rolls in and you now disappear from the public view. Your sales decline UNLESS you have another book that immediately hits the market and your name appears again.

When we had books that were in print, those books would still be there on the shelf. These books would circulate. Sure, the books might end up in a used bookstore where we all still shop, and sure, you as an author might not make money off of that sale, but we found your book.

We can't say that about digital books.

As an agent, when I am working with my clients, I often encourage them to avoid the 100% digital only market. We want to insure that those books can also come in print. Remember that not everyone has access to digital reading, and, more importantly, not everyone likes to read digitally. You lose close to 50% of your readership when you take this approach.

I do think there needs to be a huge "rethink" moment for all of those in publishing. Sure, digital might be cheaper for the publishers. Schools seem to think that as they dump textbooks and race to Open Source Software, but they too are finding huge issues. Students without WiFi at home, Limited note-taking ability, and the infamous (my computer/iPad is not charged).

Digital is fine, but it is just one approach. There are other approaches and we have to find a way to embrace all of those approaches. 

1 comment:

  1. I agree. I have many relatives who are voracious readers and none of them are on social media. They always ask me for books and what I am reading. I think digital only books limit sales and readers. There are many parts of the world that do not have internet services still and I always pack books to read in those areas and usually donate them so I don't have to carry them back.

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