Robert E. Molyneux, library data hero

Robert E. Molyneux has established at the Library Research Service a huge archive of U.S. library data from fiscal year 1987 to fiscal year 2008. The archive also includes a section of hard-to-find library data reports dating back to 1973. The relevant archive page notes:

A number of the publications here are the results of scans and conversion of the orginals into pdf files. We are all particularly indebted to Barbara Holton of NCES for these fugitive documents. Too many bore a handwritten note: “Only copy.”

Library data offer important insights into the development of the information economy. Like Robert Coen did for advertising data, Robert Molyneux has worked for years to collect and organize library data. Everyone can benefit from this publicly available knowledge.

Related:  some older U.S. library data

e-books will soon be more important than print books

The publishing industry is in the midst of a major digital transition. In July, 2010, Amazon, the leading U.S. e-book retailer, reported that in the past three months it had sold 143 Kindle e-books for every 100 hardcover books sold.[1] Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stated, “I predict we will surpass paperback sales sometime in the next nine to 12 months.”  Despite increasing e-book competition, Kindle e-book sales grew faster than Bezos expected and surpassed paperback sales this month, only six months after surpassing hardcover sales.  E-books now account for more than a third of all Amazon’s books sold.[2]

Predictions for the growth of e-book sales relative to print book sales differ greatly.  At the recent trade press conference Digital Book World, some publishing executives predicted that by 2014, half of all books sold in the U.S. will be e-books.  Michael Hyatt, CEO of a large trade book publisher, suggests that the 50% figure reflects e-book hype, and that a more realistic projection for e-book sales in 2014 is roughly 25%.[3] The share sold of e-books relative to print books has significant implications for publishers’ costs and revenues.  The range of predictions for e-book sales highlights the new uncertainties that traditional publishers face.

Systematically collected data provide some insight into the growing significance of e-books.  The share of e-book sales has been increasing significantly within a year.  Monthly book sales, however, have considerable volatility.  Identifying the secular trend in e-book sales requires accounting for month-to-month book sales volatility.[4]  Comparing e-books to print books also benefits from considering different classes of books.[5]  The e-books sold to consumers today are probably most comparable with adult trade books.  Considering wholesale major U.S. publishers’ domestic sales, e-books amounted to about 13% of adult trade books sales from September to November of 2010. Unit shares differ from sales share because e-books currently are priced roughly a third less than print books.  That means that the corresponding book share of e-books relative to adult trade books is about 20%.

The public importance of e-books is likely to be greater than their share in total book sales.  E-books will increase in public importance through:

  1. Experimentation.  E-books offer authors and publishers the opportunity to change more than just the book format.  Digital games, including casual social games, are the focus of a large and growing industry.  Social games suggest large new possibilities for books.
  2. Entry.  The large number of small print publishers will have greater opportunities with e-books.  Publishing is likely to become more closely integrated with other businesses.
  3. Sharing.  Digital media are more easily shared than are physical artifacts.  The greater ability to share e-books means that an e-book sale has more potential public leverage than a print book sale.
  4. Leading ideas.  Many persons continue to use older media forms long after newer ones have become popular. But new ideas tend to be distributed in new formats.

The shift to networked digital works, including e-books, is a huge change, and it’s happening rapidly.

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Data: U.S. book publishers’ sales (Excel version)

Notes:

[1] In September, 2010, Amazon accounted for about 60% of U.S. e-book sales.

[2] If Amazon’s paperback sales were only slightly higher than its hardcover sales, and its e-book sales just surpassed paperback sales, then its e-book sales would account for just over a third of its total book sales.  If Amazon’s paperback sales are  considerably greater than its hardcover sales (which is probably the case), then e-book sales would account for more than a third of total sales.  On the other hand, Kindles are often given as gifts.  Persons who just received a Kindle as a Christmas or Hanukkah gift probably bought more e-books in aggregate than they will in subsequent months.  These purchase time-dynamics inflate the share of e-books sold just after Christmas.

[3] PricewaterhouseCoopers’ recent study, Turning the Page: The Future of eBooks, supports Hyatt’s alternate prediction.

[4] From Dec. 2009 to Nov. 2010, U.S. monthly adult trade book wholesale sales ranged from $159 million (January) to $358 million (October). Higher education book sales had enormous various, including some months for which the Association of American Publishers reported negative total book sales.

[5] Categorization of electronic works also matters.  The U.S. Census Bureau’s Services Annual Survey shows a relatively large share of online books to print books from 2001 to 2004.  This probably reflects electronic journals included in the category “professional, technical, and scholarly books.”

different forms and business models for e-books

Inventive Labs’ web guru Joseph Pearson has thought deeply about e-books.  He argues convincingly that e-books should be paginated. Shrewdly recognizing the comparative advantage of traditional book publishers, he argues that the e-book format EPUB should not attempt to be a highly flexible web application platform:

For [book publishers] that are not software houses in chrysalis, it’s absurd to compete by trying to become their competitors. … The only sensible thing for these publishers to do is to carry the strength of their convictions and acknowledge the weight of their expertise: which is in the field of picking, refining and publishing books.
These publishers need a specification that makes the reading of ebooks — things for which their very best form is a book — as pleasurable as it can be.

The form of a book here seems to mean a bound order of book pages.

The Monocle web-browser-based e-book reader and the Booki.sh e-book platform implement this idea of a book. Barriers between books and the web disappear, not because books dissolve as a distinctive form, but because anyone with a web-browser can read a book, and anyone who wants to publish a book can do so with the open-source Monocle software.  The book business, of course, is more complicated than being able to read and write.  Booki.sh adds web-based e-book access control and personal e-book library maintenance, along with e-book software expertise.  With Booki.sh, a book publisher can focus on selecting, editing, and laying out books for a well-specified, universally accessible e-book form.

Push Pop Press exemplifies a much different direction of development in electronic publishing.  A Push Pop Press book is a standalone app developed, at least initially, specifically for the iPad and the iPhone. This app offers for a book a “new physics-based multi-touch user interface” that “feels like an exquisitely crafted game.” As apps, such books fit into a well-structured commercial market.  On the other hand, such book are neither universally accessible works nor works that traditional publishers are likely to have much expertise in creating.

Books as sets of a bound order of pages and books as game-like apps could both develop into sizable electronic publishing industries.  But they would be very different businesses.

social constraints of social media

Getting persons to coalesce around a bigger project is not as simple as describing a bigger project.  An expressed desire to be like Wikipedia (but better) isn’t enough to get persons to contribute knowledge like they do for Wikipedia. Humans pursue their self-interests socially and create complex social dynamics.

Because social relations involve complicated social calculations, knowledge sharing among persons not connected in a social network can be more efficient than knowledge sharing across social networks. That’s not just an abstract possibility. The deputy head of Google’s search division, Amit Singhal, recently made some unfashionable observations about social networks.  Asked “Can social context make search more relevant?” Singhal replied, “Maybe, maybe not.  Social is just one signal.  It’s a tiny signal.” It’s a tiny signal for true knowledge in the vast, complex space of social relations.