Publishing Companies Discovering That The Market Can Change

Overhype

from the calm-down-everyone dept

It’s not just the music and movie industries that seem to have a hard time dealing with the internet. Book publishers are now freaking out that Amazon.com sells used books alongside new books, and suggests this is the “Napster of the book industry” even if nothing illegal is happening. An Amazon representative points out their worries are overblown. Indeed, many more people are buying used books, but they’re often doing so to experiment with and discover new authors or genres — which leads to them buying even more new books. Either way, the industry has framed the issue incorrectly, calling it a “problem,” rather than looking at how it could be an opportunity. They also don’t seem to believe that (just as with the music industry) one reason why sales may be down is that people have many more options (surfing the web, playing video games, watching TV, going for a walk, etc.) than just sitting around and reading a book. Perhaps it’s more of a marketing problem than anything else.