Sales of hardcover books are down 15.5% so far this year after dropping 13% in 2008, according to the Association of American Publishers in a New York Times report titled “Will Books Be Napsterized?” As with the music industry, the digital book market is booming, but their sales of $81.5 million so far this year come nowhere close to replacing the “lost” revenue.
Also, as with music, other questions have to be asked:
Are the books being published as appealing to consumers as those in prior years?
Is consumer time being taken up by other new media attractions such as gaming consoles, smartphones, portable media players, Internet-delivered videos and the like?
Are DVRs’ reducing the time people have to read by a) letting them watch shows they might otherwise have missed and b) letting them fast-forward through stacks of commercials during which they may have previously been reading?
The thrust of the New York Times article is that piracy is the problem. It places most of the blame on Rapid-Share’s Web site, which has seemingly become the Kazaa of eBooks. Rapid-Share spokesperson Katharina Schied also sounds like Kazaa by saying in effect, “We know nothing” because a file is a file is a file as far as Rapid-Share is concerned. To get a pirated book removed from the Rapid-Share Web site, an author or publisher has to specify exactly every URL where the eBook is available on the site. Other eBook piracy sites include Hotfile and Megaupload.