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Artificial Scarcity vs Organic Abundance – Why I am Abandoning eBooks

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In 2013 the traditional book selling industry in the US produced 304,912 print titles that were distributed to bookstores such as Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million. Fiction and Juvenile genres continued to dominate the market, accounting for over 27% of new titles.

Self-publishing on the other hand saw 458,564 titles that were produced that actually had ISBN numbers. Companies such as Amazon do not require ISBN numbers for authors to submit their eBooks into  Kindle Direct Publishing. Amazon currently has 2.5 million eBooks for sale and 400,000 of them are courtesy of indie authors who opted into the program. In addition, over 300,000 titles were submitted by  Smashwords to B&N and Kobo.

Barnes and Noble on the other hand has 2.5 million paid eBooks available and another 2 million free public domain editions for download. Self-published titles continue to grow on the Nook Platform and the company said they represent about 25% of all eBook sales on Nook devices and sales are growing roughly 20% each quarter.

You can look at the traditional book selling industry as employing Artificial Scarcity where they selectively choose books that will sell in the current market climate and investing in authors who have an extensive track history of generating perennial bestsellers. Few books slip through the cracks that would be considered elevated literary fiction, the type that wins the National Novel Award or the Man Booker Prize.  Self-publishing on the other hand employs Organic Abundance with indie titles being generated at almost a 3:1 ratio vs print.

Print books have a fairly low shelf life, the average title is sitting inside of a bookstore for about three months before its cycled away for the next batch. Major publishers have embraced digital the last four years and they reap the lions share of revenue from all book sales on Amazon, B&N or Kobo. Self-publishers are seeing success on those platforms, as they are regularly in the top 100 bestselling books every week.

There are more eBooks being produced on a yearly basis from publishers and indie authors then at any point in human history. There simply is too much digital content that does not get cycled out, does not disappear, but remains perpetually available forever.  Traditionally published and self-published books are stacked right next to each other, and there is no way to filter one or the other out.  In the next few years millions of additional books will be published and submitted to Amazon, who despite themselves will make a ton of money, but at the further expense of book discovery and the quality of product.

I am hereby abandoning reading eBooks from this point forward. Something is fundamentally flawed with the entire online book discovery experience. There simply is too much content being generated for search engine algorithms to cope or to browse by subject matter. Instead, I am exclusively going to be visiting my local Chapters on a weekly basis and picking up a few good reads. At least the traditional book selling industry understands product placement, the psychology of color and makes finding a new book a social experience, rather than a solitary one.

Michael Kozlowski (7737 Posts)

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about electronic readers and technology for the last four years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the Huffington Post, CNET and more. Michael frequently travels to international events such as IFA, Computex, CES, Book Expo and a myriad of others. If you have any questions about any of his articles, please send an email to michael@goodereader.com


News Items of Interest

  • I have to say I think you are nuts to conflate difficulty in finding a product you want with the actual product.

    Yes I understand frustration in finding things you want, but leaving a platform that you seem to otherwise like because you don’t like their algorithmns seems odd.

    It doesn’t really matter if there are 300,000 new books a year or 3 millions, no individual can sort through them. So we rely on communities. I have never had a problem finding good things to read. I read blogs, I read literary magazines, I participate in goodreads, I listen to friends.

    I also have found a number of good independent authors that I am actively supporting because I think it is worthwhile to allow new authors to find an audience.

  • Hmm, so with this new revelation, will you be changing the name of your website to Bad eReader? 😉 (Sorry, Michael, couldn’t resist the joke)

    I’m sort of with Adam on wanting to support a system that allows new talent to emerge in new ways. Also, like he said, there was already well more than enough books being produced before the digital revolution. Recommendations from friends, from Goodreads and other trusted resources (and yes, bookstores and booksellers are one of those trusted resources) make a huge difference in my own reading decisions. And I go with trusted recommendations over the origin or source of the book every time. A good read is a good read.

  • I would much rather visit my local Chapters bookstore and see what is on display in the new release section or in their various book display stands with new titles in business or non-fiction to see what I would like. I have picked up some really solid reads by authors I have never heard of before, and were actually really good. If it wasn’t for my local bookstore, i would have never have discovered people like Neil Gaimon.

    Online bookstores could learn a thing or too about how real bookstores position their display areas

  • Bad e-Reader sounds good, i might make that happen. I am not abandoning e-readers altogether, I am merely disgruntled with the current state of affairs regarding amazon, b&N and Kobos existing systems. With so many books, it is impossible to discover great new reads by say just visiting Kobo. Instead, i am encouraged to visit 3rd party websites or literary blogs, when in actuality I shouldn’t even have to do that. I should visit the front page, see a ton of great reads from all genres, that have different color codes and images and it should really different from the rest of the site. In reality, everything is jumbled together, there is no proper merchandizing or psychology of color grabbing my attention.

  • You will get no dispute from me that online book stores are not that great at discovery. But I don’t really think a physical book store can really do better than people that actually know you. But maybe there is an issue about our reading styles. Very few physical book stores would have more than a small portion of the books that I have read over the last year. They could order them, but I would not be finding them through a local book store unless it was a fairly specialized one. Since I am in a suburban community in the Southeast US, my experience it that local book stores are basically worthless in carrying about half of what I read. When I used to live in Chicago and there were six bookstores in my 1 mile square neighborhood, I used to browse bookstores. But I don’t think there are six book stores in a 10 mile radius of my house now. And those that are there are focusing on popular not specialty books.

  • Well, I live in Vancouver BC, a fairly metropolitan city. Lots of indie bookstores, used bookstores, specialty ones (although they tend to focus on mind,body,spirit of Christian)

    Even when I lived in a super small town, i just visited used bookstores all the time. These guys know what sells, chain bookstores also know what sells, but I do perfer chapters/Indigo over Barnes and Noble when it comes to positioning of books.

    For example, my local bookstore is four floors of books. It takes 30 minutes just to get the section i want with navigating people, helpful clerks, and 4 esculators. its full of cool looking people that are there all for one reason. To find a book, to look for books and to read books in the store. Its an experience shared with others, online bookstores cant come close.

    Full disclosure, i have six giant bookshelves with over 500 books I bought in the last decade. I can also loan them out to friends easier than digital books.

  • Jim S

    Michael, My experience has been just the opposite or yours. I’m a lifelong, avid reader. On average I buy and read three to five new books per week. Prior to the availability of ebooks, I typically spent six to ten hours per week browsing new and used bookstores. Their greatest limitation is their limited inventory and the way the books are organized. Many books I was specifically looking for, such as the next book in a series I was reading, for weren’t in stock.

    When I went to a Barnes & Noble or Borders, for example, I’d spend an hour or so browsing the aisles, looking for new releases and sometimes backlist titles by favorite authors and well as looking for new authors and books I was unfamiliar with in the fiction genres I read – primarily mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction, and as non-fiction books across a broad spectrum of interests including history and biography, cooking and current affairs, as well other books that caught my eye or piqued my interest. I’d then grab them and head to the coffeeshop, typically with eight to ten books in hand. I’d buy my coffee and begin previewing my selections. Some I’d weed out immediately. Others I’d read a chapter or so and set aside for possible purchase. With ebooks, this is much easier and faster, either by downloading a sample or simply clicking “look inside” and reading the sample online.

    At physical bookstores, if I found less than three or four books I was interested in buying, I’d make a second or third trip down the aisles looking for more books. I’d do the same at other new and used bookstores, typically visiting at least three or four bookstores per week and spending from one hour to three hours in each store. Even so, I frequently ran out of books to read and estimate that about a third of my reading time was spent re-reading books I already owned because it wasn’t convenient to go out and shop for new books.

    Now, I read ebooks exclusively, mostly purchased from Amazon but from other online ebook sellers as well. I never run out of books to read. In fact, my TBR pile is so large that I only buy new ebooks now if it’s something I REALLY want to read or it’s on sale. I also subscribe to Kindle Unlimited and for $10 a month, I have a huge selection of additional titles available whenever I want to read them.

    I have become very good at searching out books and authors I enjoy reading and make extensive use of wishlists on Amazon. I maintain separate lists for self-published and indie authors, mainstream publishers and for Kindle Unlimited. I regularly review my wishlists, particularly for higher-priced mainstream publishers which I filter for items with price drops.

    I also subscribe to email notifications on Amazon’s author pages to alert me to new releases by authors I enjoy reading and I subscribe to daily email alerts from Bookbub for promotions and sale prices from Amazon and also have set up alerts from ereaderiq to monitor price drops on my wishlists.
    My other main tactic for finding ebooks is through Amazon’s bestseller lists. Once a week or so, I check the top 20 bestsellers in each genre I read, both paid and free. I also read several blogs (including yours) and discussion forums and find many books through recommendations by other readers and authors. I spend far less time and money finding new ebooks than I ever did when I did my shopping at physical bookstores.

    Furthermore, I’m a dual resident of the US and Costa Rica, Central America. I maintain my Amazon account in the US and have my device locations set for the US, so I have full access to the Amazon US Kindle store and to US prices. I spend most of the year at my second home in Costa Rica. It’s very difficult to find a good selection of English language books in bookstores here and they are always priced much higher than ebooks.

    I download all of my ebooks to my computer and store them in my Calibre library, so it’s very easy to browse my library and load books onto my ereader. I currently have an ebook library of about 1,500 books and all are marked as read/unread so, again, it’s easy to find books I’ve already purchased but haven’t yet read. With my three wishlists on Amazon, it’s also quick and easy to buy and download more books whenever I want them.

    As I write this, it’s about 5AM and I’m still in my pajamas. When I finish writing my comment, I’ll go to Amazon and spend a half hour to an hour browsing and perhaps buying a book or two or adding them to my wishlist before beginning my daily activities. I have no trouble filtering my searches and finding quality books in all genres I read.

    So, in short, my experiences with buying ebooks have been far different from yours. I doubt I’ll ever buy another print book. Not only is it easier and less expensive to buy ebooks, but I far prefer reading on my Kindle Paperwhite than reading paperbacks and hard covers.

  • Hmm, I know you are intimately familiar with Kobo’s line of eReading devices, Michael, but perhaps you’ve never checked out Kobo’s website and are confusing us with some of the others.

    The reason I say this is because curated and carefully merchandised products on the front page, the main eBook page and several of the category pages is exactly what the experience is all about.

    For curated self-published and small publisher titles, we have Kobo Next, which has been a rotated banner that appears in various different spots on the website and features a mix of well known plus lesser known authors and titles that our merchandisers feel are worthy of a second look (all divided by genre) – much like that gorgeous table display that reflects a bookstore staff’s selection:

    http://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/Collection/kobo-next-1

    And, to try new authors/new series without risk, we also have the following curated list of free titles:

    http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/Collection/free-ebooks

    (Please excuse the blatant linking, but I thought it might be a great way to demonstrate just a couple examples of the manner by which we curate from the known and lesser known titles and authors)

  • Just thought I’d add a note of agreement to this thread, Michael. I fully agree with you about the incredibly wonderful tactile experience that comes with browsing in a local bookstore and, like you, it’s one of my favourite things to do.

    Ever since I started reading eBooks, I’ve ended up buying MORE print books than before (because I read 3 times as many books as I used to and still suffer this affliction of having to own, in paperback form, certain ones that I have enjoyed).

    And as good as an online bookstore might be at positioning titles, dynamically generated “also boughts” served right to each customer, etc, there’s no comparison to a real and live human interaction with a knowledgeable bookseller.

  • Karl

    This doesn’t make sense on so many levels I hardly know where to begin. You’re “abandoning eBooks” because there’s too much to choose from? Because online book stores don’t do a good enough job of reading your mind and putting books that you’ll like on their front page? Because you think brick-and-mortar sellers of paper books do a better job of reading your mind?

    Here’s a newsflash for you on that last point: Brick-and-mortar stores aren’t reading your mind. All they’re doing is putting best sellers and highly promoted new releases out on their front tables. If your reading tastes run to best sellers and highly-promoted new releases, those are abundantly easy to find on any online seller of eBooks. You don’t have to open up an alphabetical list of every eBook currently available on planet earth and start reading the first few pages of each and every one.

    And if, like most well-read people, you have tastes that are little more specific than just best sellers and highly-promoted new releases, finding new books that you might enjoy is still easier to do in an online bookstore than a brick-and-mortar. It’s just a matter of educating yourself. If you like Hemingway, what do other readers who like Hemingway also enjoy? What other writers have been compared to Hemingway? Amazon’s “customers who bought xxx also bought yyy” feature may not always give you great recommendations, but a little honest effort to educate yourself will always steer you toward new and interesting authors. And in an online eBook store, those new and interesting authors will generally be just a click away.

    I’ve enjoyed Good e-Reader as a resource for a long time, but I’m really afraid you’re going off the deep end here, Michael. I’m not interested in reading a “Bad e-Reader” blog, nor a blog of rantings by someone who used to have a lot of interesting things to say about the eBook world before he lost his marbles and became incoherent.

  • Wpjs67

    I find it to be just the opposite. at the bottom of my kindle Amazon includes titles I might be interested in based my reading selections. This has often lead to a rabbit hole of discovery. Each title I explore in the kindle store includes several other related titles. IMO- this beats the heck out of wandering an unorganized used bookstore. I have discovered many titles I would have never found in a bookstore.
    Also- IMO- reading on a e-reader is far more convenient than a paper book. Much lighter. I can read in dark environments. Easier to hold with one hand. And no more holding pages open while eating. Old books on shelves attract dust and bugs. Yuck.

    Blu-rays are better than downloads. LP’s and CD’s are better than downloads. But paper books are NOT any better then book download. They hold very little, if any advantage. And Amazon now lets me share my books with other kindle owners- so that kills that argument. Books are words. It’s very easy to replicate on a tablet. You do not lose quality the way you do with other media.

  • I don’t understand the point of this article at all. Does it mean that you would rather have a selection of books picked for you, rather making your own decisions? Sounds to me like a big cop out. Btw, am I reading GoodEreader, or the Random House website?

  • Jonathan Agathokles

    This was an interesting blogpost, Michael, and one of the few where I actually bothered to read the comment section, something I usually avoid on the internet. While my experience is different from yours, I find it interesting to read yours. Reading about other people having different experiences or opinions makes people think about their own.

    Nowadays I read almost exclusively eBooks in terms of fiction, and have little problem discovering new books I might find interesting, I mostly rely on Goodreads for this. Both Goodreads own algorithms to generate books related to ones you already read or marked as want-to-read, as via Goodreads groups where every month we can vote on new books-of-the-month to read. Thus I have discovered many books I otherwise would probably not have bought or even discovered.

    I must confess though that I do get your frustration. On occasion I have “burned” myself when buying eBooks via Kobo, relying on their suggestions for books I already read (I almost exclusively deal with Kobo because they are one of the main players, have a big international presence, and unlike Amazon use ePub, so I can use Adobe Digital Editions to read it on non-Kobo devices), causing me to buy books that I ultimately found rather crappy (pardon my french). Usually they were rather cheap books, but still, it’s money I could have spent on better books. I fully agree with you that Kobo (and others), should create a system to separate books by indie authors or otherwise self-published books from books published by traditional publishers.

  • Jeffrey Freeman

    If you are no longer going to read ebooks, what is the point of writing/working for an electronic publication entitled “Goodereader.com”? Just wondering. It is kind of like if I decided I was no longer going to use a cell phone but wrote for a publication called “good cell phone.com”.

  • Julanna

    One solution could be for online book sellers to have a thorough advanced search facility enough options to make choosing easier.

  • Ebook Bargains UK

    Since when was Smashwords sending 300,000 ebooks to Amazon? Smashwords do not have a supply arrangement with Amazon.

  • CindyO

    Have you tried your local library’s eBook collection? They have curated the digital collection for you.

  • Yes, they do. But they restrict the titles to those which have earned $2,000 or more, and they chose which ebooks to order. It is the option which most authors will not or cannot meet.

  • Your loss of will to explore in order to find “good books” to read is your choice. Others will blithely go on looking for that gem among the coal. Your complaint is not likely to stop authors and publishers from posting new titles, so it’s not really going to change much. I am not going to stop writing just because people like you are going to stop reading ebooks. There is print, but you are not going to find many books in the bookstores because they have limited space to stock them. Feel free to limit your own search, but don’t expect people to follow you.

  • The problem lies with the big ebook sellers not bothering to trim out the thousands of title which have gone out of print or have been revised and updated. They do not conduct their own catalog searches, so many titles simply sit there and clog up the catalog. There is usually a “new release” window in their sites, but a book which is there for maybe a week or two will disappear down the rabbit hole into obscurity. There are not that many bestsellers among that bunch, either. You are just going to have to soldier on.

  • This has nothing to do with “too many eBooks”. It has to do with the fundamental fact that people are social animals. Downloading eBooks from the Internet distances the individual from physical interaction with others, e.g. standing in front of a pile of books and discussing them with a total stranger.