The news that Barnes and Noble is putting itself up for sale and will be using its floor space to sell toys and other items spells the death knell for publishing and bookselling as we have known it in our time.
It was, of course, as predictable as sunrise and comes as no surprise to those of us that have been following these trends over the past decade. Indeed, it is measurable by my own experience. I digitized my thirty odd works of fiction years ago and helped Sony launch the first e-reader at the Las Vegas International Consumer Electronics show in 2007.
It took years for e-books to develop and left lots of hopeful entrepreneurs bereft and bankrupt along the way. Indeed, Barnes and Noble entered the e-book market years ago, then abandoned the project and shut it down. I clearly remember discussing this with Len Riggio who created and ran the Barnes and Noble chain at a cocktail party years ago and urging him to reconstitute his e-book thrust arguing that it was the future. Eventually Barnes and Noble reentered the market and is currently trying to play catch-up, a formidable challenge.
With more than 700 odd stores Barnes and Noble is clearly the most important player in the book business as it is presently constituted. Its business strategy now will be to build its content merchandising around the Nook, its e-reader and will try selling other items to utilize its massive floor space once devoted solely to print books.
Whatever the future for Barnes and Noble, it was and still is the citadel for mass publishing and perfect for its time, which is passing fast. Indeed, I have always mourned the passing of those wonderful old second hand bookstores that once lined the streets near downtown NYU and the many independent bookstores that were a fixture in most American towns.
It seems obvious that as the leases for Barnes and Noble bookstores expire, the company might have to abandon some stores unless they can sell other merchandise to lift their profit picture. The impact of such potential changes on the publishing business will be profound. Like it or not, the paper book publishing business and the big box bookstores that support it will have to morph into something else to survive.
Indeed, the whole present publishing feeding chain will be affected, especially literary agents, editors, secretaries, office help and, of course, printers, binders, salesman, book shelvers, bookcase carpenters, retail clerks and on and on. Think of how all this will impact public libraries.
The effect on the individual author will be gut-wrenching. Advances will shrink further. Publishing houses will downsize. Working authors who have made it to the traditional publishing ranks and appear in their catalogues will find themselves competing with more and more self-published authors who will be on an equal marketing footing on all e-reader venues.
Of course, being published does not mean being read. The chances are that only a tiny percentage of un-filtered self-published books will ever find a paying audience of readers but such an outcome will hardly deter the determination of people who want to see their books available to the public and live in hopes of literary fame and fortune or simply attaining the status of “published author.” Similar aspirations are goals for many authors of books published by traditional authors as well.
There are now roughly half a million books being “published” in the U.S. split between traditional and self-published authors. Most will eventually be digitized. Envision millions of books digitized yearly as more and more self-published material enters the marketplace. Textbooks, a massive market, are quickly gaining digital traction.
It is conceivable that the number of books published each year will be eventually measured in the millions and since no digitized book will ever again go out of print it is not too farfetched to predict that the number of books in print will reach into the multi-millions and eventually the billions if books are counted in global terms and in all languages.
For the individual seriously committed author, especially novelists, the challenge will be to find his or her audience, to reach beyond the incessant chatter and make his or her voice known. Although there are many entrepreneurs out there in cyberspace who promise authors that they can achieve this feat of individualization through social networking, video exploitation, advertising and other methods of exposure the fact is that none of them can accurately equate such efforts at awareness with acceptable sales results.
As an author of novels who has been out there in cyberspace for a decade, I am trying my best to meet the challenges ahead in this new environment. Because I believe implicitly that reading works of the imagination can give one insight into the human condition and can teach us how to understand and cope with the vicissitudes of life, I am still optimistic about an author’s prospects in this disjointed new world.
To many people reading is like oxygen and, as always, compelling stories will somehow find their way to the eager reader. It is a need that must be filled.
In the patchwork and splintered world of cyberspace it undoubtedly will be harder for one’s authorial voice to be heard. At first, sadly, it may not mean fatter paychecks for the author and psychic satisfaction will not put food on the table, but I am naïve enough to believe that good works will ultimately find their audience of eager readers with money in hand. Don’t ask how this will occur. But then no one in publishing has, as yet unraveled the mystery of the how and why of what really sells books.
Mr. Adler is the author of 30 books including novels such as 
August 15th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Do you have a news link for this information about Barnes and Noble? I would like to read more.
August 21st, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Warren: Great article. I just finished reading another great book(One Second After by William R. Forstchen) that posits a different and far darker future, a future where the US is hit by one of our enemies using one nuclear device exploded 25 miles overhead and releasing an Electromagnetic Pulse that destroys every electronic device in the country. If that ever happens, we won’t have to worry about the future of publishing. We’ll be worrying about where our next meal is coming from. Basically, it’ll be like turning the clock back about 500 years. Scary stuff.
August 21st, 2010 at 4:13 pm
I did also want to comment on another aspect of your article. I personally believe the Internet will destroy all forms of Big Money Entertainment.
August 24th, 2010 at 4:08 am
“If that ever happens, we won’t have to worry about the future of publishing. We’ll be worrying about where our next meal is coming from. Basically, it’ll be like turning the clock back about 500 years”
I would disagree with that. An EMP that would destroy electronic devices would only take our society back at most fifty to seventy years- the point at which the vacuum tube came to be. And even then, the manufacturing facilities are still there, the books to make them all are still there. Would it cause damage? Sure. But don’t kid yourself. These end-of-world scenarios are always lacking in rational, logical thought and can quickly be dismissed. I saw a similar thing the other day on a cable channel that talked about what would happen if a global disaster were to obliterate most of humanity and talked breathlessly about how medicine would disappear and people would die from simple cuts- as if all our stored knowledge on things like antibiotics is just going to go away, despite being in every library in the country.
August 25th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Great article – I thoroughly agree with the sentiments.
Having published three ebooks in the last eight months and making them available across a multitude of platforms the three thousand plus downloads has been achieved at considerable effort – marketing is still the greatest hurdle in the overcrowded digital publishing race.
August 26th, 2010 at 3:00 am
I totally agree with that, des. I’ve been trying to get a book published for over a YEAR now, still with no luck. Without a doubt, the writing of it is the easiest part.
February 1st, 2011 at 8:14 pm
It is possible so that you can become a wonderful traditional hunter. All you should try to learn all you can about your craft to be able to find true bargains.