Despite Rapidly Changing Industry, Book Lovers Thrive

Despite the many changes facing the publishing industry, Evan Oare was overjoyed this August when he landed his dream job at Penguin Group. “They’re the company that I wanted to work for most, but I never thought I would end up there,” said Oare, a special markets assistant at Penguin Group who specializes in sales to retailers like Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. “There’s a new book to be excited about every day,” he said.

The rise of e-books and fierce competition from online companies to contend with, however. CNN reported in January of this year that Amazon had sold 115 kindle books for every 100 paperback books, and according to the 2010 American Association of Publishers press release, e-book sales increased 164.4% in 2010. Because of the ensuing stress that both e-books and online retailers have placed on major book retailers, like the much-beleaguered Borders, which finally shuttered its windows in February, the expanding publishing industry has had to adjust to growing demands for books that are cheaper and more readily attainable. “In a way [Borders closing] is better for us, because it is one less store to compete with,” said Spencer Anderson, an employee at Alabaster Bookshop, an independently run bookstore on Fourth Avenue. Alabaster has been in the used book business for 15 years. “But at the same time, Borders went out of business because of competitors like Amazon and electronic books, which is also putting us out of business.”

Large publishing houses have also borne the brunt of decreasing sales in print. BookStats, a survey of recent U.S. publishing trends in print and digital formats released in August, found that sales in trade mass-market of paperbacks declined 13.8 percent since 2008. Oare said that publishing houses have consequently been forced to become even more cautious by investing in the most marketable titles they can, and making business acquisitions that will help offset losses if they have a bad year. “You really have to hedge your bets,” said Oare. “We’re trying to cover a lot of the sales we’ve been losing in novels and traditional kinds of books, because a lot of that’s going over to e-books.”

These changes have also affected authors who are currently trying to publish their work, like Joshua Gaylord, an adjunct literature professor at The New School. Gaylord released his second novel, titled “The Reapers Are the Angels,” last year with Holt Paperbacks, and is currently shopping around its prequel to various publishers. “It’s really a floating industry. I’ve never felt as though I’ve landed in a place that was going to be my career-long publishing house, each book feels as though I’m selling it from scratch again.”

Gaylord has also noticed a shift the attitude of publishing houses and their editors.  “It used to be more of a case where editors would have a long-term vision, they would take on an author, and they would endure a couple of books that weren’t so successful because they were waiting for maybe five or 10 years down the road,” said Gaylord. “That’s less the case now.”

In spite of decreasing print sales accompanying steadily rising sales in digital media — the Association of American Publishers announced in July that e-book sales had increased 160 percent for the first half of 2011, compared with a 9 percent dip in print sales, reported by The New York Times Book Review — Oare is confident that the benefits of physical books are too great to see the medium disappear completely. “Even if print does go out, I don’t think it’s going to be for decades,” said Oare. “I don’t see how a tablet is ever going to replace having a really nice art book. There’s something about actually having it on paper that can’t be replicated, at least not with the technology right now.”

Although the publishing industry is in the midst of major transformations, especially with the discouraging closing of Borders, members of the industry stay positive and maintain a sense of humor about the situation. Back at Alabaster Books, Anderson has not felt much of a change. “We haven’t been any busier since Borders closed down,” said Anderson, “but I have noticed that people have been selling us books that they bought from Borders.”

-Additional reporting by Rey Mashayekhi