The Seismic Shift in Publishing
As a New Yorker posting an article the day after our little tremor, I couldn’t resist the title. Below is a blog by writer Brian Moreland on the state of bookstores and publishing. I couldn’t agree with him more…
Farewell to Borders; Hello, e-Publishing, By Brian Moreland
My favorite local book store, Borders, where I used to love to hang out and buy books, has recently closed its doors, as are all the Borders stores across America. Today, I discovered another local independent book store, Legacy Books, which did a lot for the community of authors and book lovers here in Dallas, Texas, also shut its doors forever. Before that, I had witnessed other smaller Mom-&-Pop book stores close, because they couldn’t compete with the bigger chains. In the world of books and book sellers, as Bob Dylan once sang, “the times they are a-changin’.”What’s causing this change? Online book stores like Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Booksamillion.com have changed the way readers buy books. And more and more readers are buying e-books over paperback and hardbacks.
“According to the Association of American Publishers (AARP), sales figures for the first half of 2011…paperback sales dipped nearly 18% and hardback sales fell 23% compared to the same period the previous year.”
On the contrary, e-book sales are up 160% from this time a year ago. Every publishing professional I’ve talked to sees ebooks as the future for books.
*To read the rest of Brian’s article, please click here.
Hunter Shea 
It’s not the future, it’s already the present!
True, true, although I still meet people every day who are fighting the inevitable. Hey, the move up from carving into stone tablets was a positive one. Now we’re back to tablets, but just wee bit lighter.