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The Internet and books -- transformation of an industry

by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com
This article was heard on the radio program "The Computer Report," which is broadcast live on WCAP in Lowell, Mass., and is syndicated on WBNW in Boston and WPLM in Plymouth, Mass.

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Sooner or later we'll all be reading electronic books like in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- using portable computer-like gadgets. Then the nature of books themselves will change since they won't have to be read linearly from beginning to end, but rather will have many hyperlinked and search-based paths; and with sound and video as well as text. Already there are tens of thousands of books in plain text electronic form available for free over the Internet, thanks to volunteer projects like Gutenberg. But while I applaud those efforts and download many of those texts, I must admit that I rarely read them -- only when I haven't been able to find a print edition of the same book. That's partly a matter of habit and largely a matter of eye balls -- it just isn't comfortable yet either with regard to the experience of text on a screen or portability. My eyes get tired when trying to read something lengthy -- so I'm inclined to print out the articles and book chapters I come across on the Web. Also, my laptop's batteries run down too fast, and my palm's screen and type size are a nuisance for anything but short messages.

But in the meantime, long before the electronic book comes of age, the Internet is having an enormous impact on the book industry.

Take for instance, the Harry Potter phenomenon. I got hooked reading the first three books aloud to my son. So when word got out four or five months ago that a fourth book was in the works, I went to Amazon and placed my order. At that time, I was surprised to find that many others had done so also -- that already the new Harry Potter book was the number one best seller at Amazon, even though it had not yet been published. This was truly extraordinary. Books are usually not purchased in advance of being manufactured. It's usually a wild gambling game on the part of the publisher -- guessing how many will sell, printing that number, shipping them off to distributors and stores, hoping that they get shelf space and visibility and word of mouth, and then having those distributors and stores return unsold copies for full credit.

Before, the publisher only learned about demand after the crucial decisions had been made. Before, the publishers only contact with the reading public was indirect, based on feedback from the distributors and book stores.

Now, thanks to online book sellers like Amazon, the process has been speeded up greatly, and buyer behavior is changing radically. In fact, by Saturday, July 8 -- the official publication date -- Amazon alone had sold 357,644 copies of the new Harry Potter book. They have even set up a special "Harry Potter Store" where they try to point fans to other similar products and where they also keep a count, updated hourly, of how many copies have been sold at Amazon.

But what about immediacy? Here's a book in high demand, a book that people have been anxiously awaiting for months. Why order it over the Internet and wait for days or weeks for it to be delivered, when you could drive around the corner and pick up one at a local bookstore?

When I ordered my copy, I selected "standard shipping" -- 3 to 7 days. I didn't want to pay a premium price to get it quickly, even though I was tempted to do so. I suspected that with this high level of demand, local stores will soon be out of stock. I even suspected that Amazon would soon be out of stock, and that in any case, it would probably be a couple weeks after the publication date before I could get my copy.

Much to my surprise, I got an email from Amazon the night before telling me that at no extra charge they had upgraded me to FedEx overnight/Saturday delivery and that my copy was on the way. Then at 11 AM on the day of publication, it arrived. That's service. That's delighting your customers. And that's turning what could have been a logistical nightmare into a triumph. In a broader sense, the Internet, by changing the nature of ordering and distribution is redefining the rules of the game for printed book publishing.

Meanwhile another important change has crept up on us, without anywhere near the fanfare of the Harry Potter book. Technology has been making it possible to economically produce printed books in smaller and smaller quantities. Typesetting has become a matter of converting ordinary word processing files. And the machines used for printing and binding have become so flexible, thanks to computer control, that it is no longer necessary to print thousands of copies of the same thing at the same time to drive down manufacturing costs. In fact, it is now possible to economically print and bind a single copy of a book.

In other words, with this approach, customers could order books before any copies are printed, and publishers would be able print and distribute individual copies on demand, eliminating the enormous waste in the present hit-or-miss system. But how would that actually work?

People who frequent bookstores typically want to hold a book in their hands and flip through the physical pages before making up their mind. But people who have grown used to buying books over the Internet, don't need that tactile experience any more. Descriptions, reviews, and excerpts are sufficient to help them decide. And clearly there are hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people who have gone through that change of habit already.

But what about immediacy? I recently bought a print-on-demand book from 1st Books www.1stbooks.com. I had heard about a new translation of Good Soldier Svejk, a comic novel set in the First World War that has an enormous reputation in Europe, but which had been rarely read in English because of the poor quality of the translation in the Penguin edition. I placed my order at the 1st Books Web site, paid my $10.95, plus standard shipping by credit card. And five days later the book arrived at my house -- an attractive, professional looking, easy to read, and well bound paperback book.

If the word spreads, this way of producing and distributing books could and should become the norm. With no waste in printing and distributing and warehousing large quantities of books that people don't want, the costs and risks of book publishing could diminish greatly. And that could lead to an increase in the variety and quality of books readily available to the public. In other words, today, thanks to the Internet as a means of connecting buyers and sellers, we are seeing the beginnings of a major revolution in book publishing, still long before electronic books begin to replace paper.


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