The pace of change in the book world is accelerating. In 2009, Indigo CEO Heather Reisman figured that 15% of her traditional book business would be eroded by e-book sales within 5 years.
On April 8, 2011, she told The Globe & Mail’s Marina Strauss, she’s looking at 40% in the net 5 years.
U.S. e-book sales are expected to nearly triple to $2.8-billion by 2015, according to Forrester Research estimates.
And an
April 11 response by Bruce Batchelor to a Quill & Quire Omni report on Strauss’s article argues:
“The change from print-books to e-books is happening even faster than Heather predicts. Some large US publishers are reporting 25% of their sales are already happening in e-book format, and none are reporting less than 10%. This is particularly noticeable in FICTION, for which print-book sales dropped 9.8% in the UK in the first quarter of 2011, compared to last year; in the US, print-book sales dropped a massive 19.3% for the past three months. [Both figures from Nielsen Book, the main industry tracking system.]"
Linda Leith
.ll.
The D&M story should be a wake-up call to Canadians. Canadian literature has thrived nationally and internationally thanks to measures put in place to support Canadian writing and publishing. The measures currently in place, though, were designed for a bygone era. It’s time to revisit those measures, and fast.
Photo: Eléonore Delvaux-Beaudoin
The Globe and Mail wins the prize for obscurity.
"Shakespeare is – let us put it this way – the least English of English writers. The typical quality of the English is understatement, saying a little less than what you see. In contrast, Shakespeare tended toward the hyperbolic metaphor, and it would come to us as no surprise to learn that Shakespeare had been Italian, or Jewish, for instance." -- Jorge Luis Borges 1979
The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Writers are always complaining they don’t have enough time to write, even those who are “full-time” writers. I used to find that puzzling, but now that I have joined the ranks of full-time writers, I understand better. The question, “When do you write?” is not a silly question. This is why writers are careful to broach it only with close friends. The answer has something to do with what I write – and a lot to do with whether I write at all.
