ArtsBeat

Two reports this week from the publishing industry illustrate the dynamic changes print culture is currently undergoing, as new technologies reshape the marketplace and the ongoing recession continues to erode the traditional book publishing business model.
 
R.R. Bowker LLC, the company that compiles official bibliographic information, issues International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) in the United States, and maintains the proprietary publishing industry books-in-print database, reported on Wednesday that "traditional" book publishing in the United States declined by 3.2% in 2008.  Bowker's preliminary figures obtained from over 75,000 publishers show 275,232 new titles and editions published in 2008, down from the 284,370 that were published in 2007.  Bowker's statistics previously noted a 2% drop in titles published in 2007 from audited 2006 figures. 
 

The truly stunning news, however, is in the segment of the market referred to as "On Demand" publishing, which includes so-called "short-run" titles published by small and independent presses, online books, and self-published titles that were issued an ISBN number.  Bowker reports that 285,394 "On Demand" books were produced last year, an eye-opening 132% increase over 2007’s final total of 123,276 titles.
 
Kelly Gallagher, Vice President of Publisher Services for Bowker, referred to this as an "historic development in the U.S. book publishing industry," as On Demand and short-run books now exceed the number of traditional books entering the marketplace.  This is the second consecutive year of triple-digit growth in the "On Demand" segment, which in 2008 was 462% above figures reported in 2006.

“It remains to be seen how this trend will unfold in the coming years before we know if we just experienced a watershed year in the book publishing industry, fueled by the changing dynamics of the marketplace and the proliferation of sophisticated publishing technologies, or an anomaly that caused the major industry trade publishers to retrench,” observed Gallagher.
  
In a related story that was widely reported on Monday, Scribd, a recent internet start-up company that markets itself as a "social publishing site," and hopes to become the YouTube of self-publishing, unveiled a new feature that will allow anyone with a access to the Web to "upload a document and charge for it."
 
The feature will permit users to upload sample chapters of "books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like." Users can read documents on the site, embed them in other sites and share links over social networks and e-mail.

In the brand new Scribd store which was also unveiled on Monday, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent of the revenue. (Contrast this figure with the 37% Google Books is offering published authors for the rights to distribute the digital rights to their books.)
 
Scrbd authors and publishers can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied.  Scrbd says it will publish documents in various formats, including as unprotected PDFs, which would make them readable on the Amazon Kindle and most other mobile devices.  Scribd also reported it will be introducing an application for downloading documents onto Apple's iPhone platform in June.
 
--R.D. Pohl