As I was recently trying to explain the bookselling business to my sister, who has a marketing (but not a book marketing) background, I found myself wondering again just how the whole publishing business model got so screwed messed up. These days, many of us think nothing of plunking down several dollars for a cup of coffee, but we look at a book and think—gee, I don’t know if I want to spend money on that. (I confess, I do this too, although I’m also a skinflint about the coffee.)
The coffee will be gone in minutes at most; a book can provide hours, if not days of entertainment.
The coffee took seconds to prepare; the book might have taken decades a year or more to write and edit. And yet somehow we have all been taught to value the book and the author’s time less than the coffee and the barista’s? Does that not strike you as a wee bit peculiar?
How do you think we got here? Is it because of the internet phenomenon that anyone who posts words online now thinks of herself as a writer? Is it because of Amazon Select and all the free book giveaways?
An even more important question for all authors and the future of the book business: What do we need to do change this system so readers value authors and books again? Please share your thoughts.
Part of the problem may be not the price of the product, but what do you do with it after? Books take up space. Coffee is consumed. Devoured. Used, it takes no space. Books can be passed on or resold, but that doesn’t contribute to the author’s royalty. Kindle and Nook offer an attractive alternative to a reader who relishes a small library and a neat home. Maybe with that, readers will increase their value of authors and books. But then, there is the public library.
Coffee is something with a pretty narrow range of prices — espresso drinks run between $2.50 and $6; regular coffee is less. Books, on the other hand, run the gamut from expensive reference books that may cost $75 or more, to your 99-cent specials on Amazon. Maybe with coffee there’s a consistent and discrete amount of materials and skills that go into it. Books can take months or years of painstaking work to create — or can be dashed off in a few months. Depends on the type of book, the author, etc. So buying a book is, in some cases, a bit of a gamble. Plus, as you say, there are many ways to acquire books free — mainly borrowing, but there are “free books” outside Michael’s Bookstore in Bellingham every day! So that’s the “supply and demand” side.
But there’s also the question of whether our stress levels and general exhaustion as a population affects this type of choosing. Are we all so frantic that the value of a cup of sweet caffeine — something that can be consumed in a few minutes and deliver an instant glow — is higher than the hours of contentment/excitement that a book can deliver? Is it just that we HAVE a few minutes, but don’t have the hours a book will take to read?