Book Thoughts: June 2025
Substack, the digital platform where “Peter Osnos Public Affairs Press” regularly appears, suggests that writers consider reposting older pieces if they are relevant, making them available to new readers, updated where necessary. The piece below appeared on Medium, another newsletter format, in January 2020, and I was surprised to see it pop up there the other day with a handful of recent readers. In significant respects what it describes about books then is still the case,
I have added two significant developments:
Bookshop.org, founded in 2020, is an online print book marketplace specifically intended to provide revenue to independent booksellers — in their competition with Amazon and the revived Barnes & Noble chain. In January 2025, Bookshop.org started selling ebooks and credited bookstores with the sale, a revenue asset for them.
The spread of print-on-demand capacity is a means of making books available in smaller numbers, either to replenish backlist titles — an increasingly large share of book sales — or for authors who want to print books for their own or limited use.
So, as it was in 2020, the world of books has sustained and even improved its place in the national media scene — welcome news when so much else seems to be troubled.
***************************************
In 2009, Shelf Awareness, a leading chronicler of developments in the world of books, featured a column called “Our ‘Bright’ Digital Future.” I had been interviewed for the piece, and I asked John Mutter, the editor, if I could quote from it. Here is a key sentence, including a quote from me:
Because of changes in technology that are occurring rapidly, a model for book publishing is developing that will make it possible for “every reader to have the opportunity to choose how they want to access a book when they want.”
This was only two years after the launch of Amazon’s Kindle, which for the first time made ebooks readily accessible. Audio was still moving from abridged books to complete versions on CDs. In 2008, Audible was acquired by Amazon, and the era of books downloadable to the smartphone began, only one year after the iPhone hit the market.
Reflecting on those comments now, it is fair to say that, uncharacteristically, these optimistic predictions were right. Publishing and bookselling have absorbed the digital upheaval better than other forms of media — in part because books were never supported by advertising, as magazines, newspapers, and television are. By most measures, print books are still the overwhelming format for sales — somewhere around 70 percent. Ebooks are about 20 percent, and audio is at about 10 percent and growing fast.
These figures apply to trade books for the general consumer. Textbook sales have been hammered largely because they were overpriced and alternatives to that material emerged that were cheaper. The high price of books was a principal concern for the college students I taught some years ago.
Publishing, by its nature, always faces some sort of business peril as distribution methods evolve. In the last fifty years or so, we saw a rise in discounted books in bland mall stores, then came the superstore chains like Barnes & Noble and Borders, which would buy books nationwide and return them in large numbers. Now, of course, there is Amazon, which is the biggest retailer by far of print books, with overwhelming dominance in ebooks and downloadable audio. The record of history is clear: something — still to be defined — will eventually challenge Amazon.
And meantime, the consensus is that independent bookselling has shown more resilience than was expected. The number of stores overall is down but steadily rising again. There are bookstore owners who still believe that their business model is not sustainable because of costs and competition. Yet from what I have seen on travels around the country, the independents that have evolved are doing well (though anyone whose main mission was to get rich chose the wrong means of doing so in handselling of books).
Indies in places where readers tend to be concentrated — neighborhoods in New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Denver, Miami, suburban Chicago, and even Manchester, Vermont, among others — are prized community assets. Customers take pride in their association with those stores, as they do from subscribing to The New Yorker and listening to NPR and trendy podcasts. The coffee shops, the reading groups, and the pleasures of browsing have sustained themselves.
It has always been a mistake, in my considered view, to think of all Americans as potential customers for local bookstores. We have our base, just like people who make indie movies, maybe 10 to 15 percent of the population. Revenues are circumscribed and always will be.
The continuing conglomeration of publishing companies may also seem negative, and doubtless big isn’t the same as benign, even if it can be more efficient. Having been the founder of an independent publisher myself in the 1990s, I can appreciate the reassuring difference in the financial resources of a major company compared to the never-ending focus on access to the cash you need. Independent publishers have certainly not disappeared; consider the success, to take just two examples, of Graywolf and Grove Atlantic.
So, what can be anticipated for the next fifteen years? What can bookstores and publishers do better?
Experts can give you a long list of issues that need to be addressed. For publishers, dollar advances to politicians and celebrities too often defy reality, and inventory management can always be improved. Booksellers will have to cope with landlords, supporting qualified staff with salaries and benefits, and the hassles of managing relations with corporate behemoths. And there are the other facts of life.
Here are two major matters I think booksellers and publishers would do well to address in the coming decade or so.
To deploy a bit of jargon: multi-platform availability. In the 2009 piece, I was quoted as saying that in coming years you should be able to choose the format you want for a book and get it. I still believe that making books available in several ways simultaneously is as important a development in book sales as, say, the emergence of low-cost paperbacks were in the last century.
And yet, too often customers still ask for a book and are told that, for one reason or another, it is not in stock. When disappointed, they tend to go to Amazon for the purchase with assurance that it will come, generally in a day or two. But if the printed book you want has an ISBN (the universal title identifier for any book intended for commercial distribution), it can now be ordered in every store. I have tested this fact in stores coast-to-coast.
Publishers and authors will always have the considerable challenge of making books visible through publicity and social media, so readers know how to ask for them. Publicity strategies are a subject deserving of separate attention, which I will do again soon.
Since 2020, the brick-and-mortar stores have gradually enhanced their ability to sell print books online for home delivery. Bookshop.org is now a major site with revenue being shared with member stores. And in 2025 the company added ebooks for sale, again with a share of revenue for booksellers.
But it is still the case that when it comes to digital reading, most people choose the Kindle, like Xerox and Scotch Tape once were, Kindles are not merely the brand name. They are what the device is usually called.
The process of print-on-demand, machines that can print books in minutes in smaller numbers, has been around for some time but is growing in use and popularity. All publishers can now put books into POD when they want a smaller number to sell, rather than the larger number for general distribution of a newly released book.
Politics and Prose, a leading independent store in Washington DC will produce books for customers who provide the texts. To give a sense of the costs, here are P&P’s available offerings. The print price per book depends on its length and whether there are illustrations. A recent relatively short book cost $2.89 per copy to print. Elaborate books can cost as much as $14 .
In Washington, there are a great many people who feel they have something to say – if only to family and friends.
An idea I put forward in 2020 has not yet been adopted. It is “bundling” of formats, in print for home, digital for travel. A major seller for PublicAffairs in 2019 was The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. It is a tech-related business book, over seven hundred pages long. After stellar reviews, the book took off. Why not add a link from the printed book to a digital version? It can be on your shelf and on your phone. If there are technical questions to resolve — and more important, questions on how to price the added value — I can imagine people welcoming this possibility.
Another issue that I’d like to see improved relates to the media even more than booksellers. In today’s ways of presenting news and entertainment, consumers tend to associate themselves with purveyors more than they did in the past. Consider, for example, the difference between MSNBC and Fox News or the New York Times and Breitbart. Choosing the brand often indicates what you will find inside.
I contend that this can also be the case for books. There are successful “conservative” imprints at publishers large and small, especially in the Trump era. I have been told that readers don’t really care who the publisher is. They should, as a means of assessing a book’s credibility and standards. It would be a service to readers — and I think potentially add to sales — to know whether the source is one of “theirs,” as other forms of presentation now are. I’m thinking here of the difference between, say, W.W. Norton and Regnery.
It is demonstrable, based on the twenty-first century so far, that books will not be undone by technology, as so many pundits predicted. You’d certainly have made more money investing in Google, Apple, or Amazon than in books. These behemoths are now being scrutinized for their practices. We can again affirm with confidence that books, analog and digital, are part of our lives. Thank goodness.
***************************
Now scheduling weekly publication and a revised banner
