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Printing consolidation necessary to survive

Skilled Workman Posted on by

print consolidation necessaryPrinting consolidation necessary:
Xerox buying R.R. Donnelley

This is all part of the consolidation necessary to make these hugely expensive presses run. Hardware prices make printing consolidation necessary. The article in Publishing Executive only covers magazines. But it goes much further than that.
In my world, everything is on-demand. This includes the on-demand presses, and the four ereaders: Kindle, iPad/Phone, Nook, & Kobo. We’ll see this change here also. Someone will take on Ingram, just like someone will take on Amazon. Ingram is still stuck in the old paradigm of returns and commercial printing quality.

The new on-demand publishing is only partially freed

Traditional publishers still tend to dominate the news and the stats. However. Who would’ve thought two decades ago that Walmart’s retail stranglehold would be broken so powerfully by Amazon? We can see this by looking at top retailers online. Yes, Amazon has become a dominant force in publishing. In the short run, this will remain reality. 

Top Five Online Retailers

  1. Amazon
  2. Staples
  3. Apple
  4. Walmart
  5. Dell

Surprised? Probably not. The huge malls are having a lot of trouble this year. Big box stores are increasingly finding profit difficult. Personally, Amazon Prime is increasingly my choice over getting dressed appropriately for public display, getting in the car, driving and parking, wandering around a square-block-size building, getting back in the car, and driving home. Plus, as I live in a small town, the store often does not stock what I need.

But we are talking about books.

So how does it look for books? I can’t remember when I last bought a book at a bookstore. The local B&N simply does not stock the books I am looking for. A search on Amazon usually gives me several choices.

There are really only two playing the game: Amazon and Barnes & Noble. In 2013, Amazon was nearly triple the size of B&N in the US. But, if you include international sales, Amazon is seven times the size of B&N. This size divergence has certainly increased in the past three years. In 2014, Amazon had 65% of the total online book sales: print and ebook. They are a little stronger with ebooks, but not much. Most of this dominance has occurred in the last decade.

Remember, ten years ago the ebook market barely existed—
and it was all PDFs.

 So, how long can something like a Kindle dominate the world? In my book sales, Kindle is down to barely 25%. I understand that for popular genre fiction, this is not true at all. Kindle is running over 90% for many of those authors. But as a reader, I would drop Kindle in a heartbeat if I could find a retailer who sold the books I actually read. Even now, I really can’t find the fiction I read, in Amazon. But there is no other choice. That’s a vacuum which will be filled by someone.
  • What would happen if Apple or Kobo bought B&N?
  • Once Ingram dies (and its position is shaky), who takes its place?
  • Who’s going to recognize that something like CBD is stuck with paper backs & provide a solid resource for Christian ebooks?

I have few answers, but changes like this are coming. In fact, if there is one thing we’ve adjusted to since the 1990s, change is speeding up. Something like these options is coming to a Website near you fairly soon. Right?

 

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Printing consolidation necessary to survive — 7 Comments

  1. Walmart certainly isn’t appealing to me. The nearest store is too huge and I typically find they either don’t have an item (because it sells too rarely) or had an entire aisle of almost identical products (i.e laundry detergent). It’s not worth the trouble, particularly since Kroger’s seems to have prices that are as good and doesn’t have a parking lot the size of a big city airport.

    Dressing up and going out isn’t that big a deal for me. I do my grocery shopping on Wednesday when I get a discount. I do all my other shopping in one big circuit on Saturday. If I forget something, it just waits until the next week.

    For Amazon, I avoid paying the usual price. I find what I want there and then paste the link into

    http://camelcamelcamel.com

    Setting a price I’m willing to pay. For most items, Camel offers a price history, so it’s not hard to set one that comes up every few months. All things come to him who waits.

    My hunch is that, in this rapidly changing marketplace, the public needs to rethink how they shop, selecting what works best for them. Generally, one retailer isn’t best for everything. And don’t forget that the best way to save is to now wait until you have to buy. Start looking for a deal well in advance.

  2. David, the little guy is gone. I worked in the building industry as a salesman when South Jersey had numerous small and medium sized builders. Monthly dinners, golf outings, picnics, luncheons, cooperation imbedded in competition. Diversity of houses. Easy financing. No more. The big guys tie up everything. The camaraderie is gone. It’s a new way of life in so many ways. Now I’m finishing my 1st book, at the age of 86. It’s a blessing to know of a thing called Indie. Forget the big pub houses. I’m a little cracker box. I like your web. Very instructive and honest.

  3. Why the insuation that Ingram’s time is limited? Who currently handles print on demand or traditional distribution better or on a bigger scale than Ingram?

  5. Ingram still charges for ISBNs [they always were free], their proofs are expensive and unnecessarily difficult to produce, and their procedures are archaic for presses that are no longer used. They’re using printing quality copiers just like everyone else. Someone will come in and do it better, cheaper, and more easily. They need to forget returns because that level of wholesaling will disappear when the book store does [and it’s almost gone now]. All book sales will be online fairly soon [except for a few isolated indie bookstores]. There’s nothing in B&N now. Createspace can do it all—the industry is just prejudiced against them because they are so big. Createspace will distribute through Ingram.

    The problem is that Ingram’s distribution means nothing without the constant availability of Amazon, iBooks, B&N, and Kobo to get the sales going.

  6. Do you mean Ingram charges for the ISBN itself, or to insert it in the book file? I’ve always bought my own through Bowker and have never heard of them being free in the U. S.. I have heard that they are free in Canada to Canadian residents.

    I used Createspace to produce the print version of my last book and plan to use Ingram’s IngramSpark on my next one.

  7. Neither: they require you to buy an ISBN. This is a sizable, and unnecessary, cost for the self-publisher—in my opinion. ISBNs didn’t exist before 1970. I do not know when they started charging for them.

    I use Createspace and/or Lulu for my print versions.

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