Well, I should have known he was a bit of a totem. Lots of my conversations at Book Expo in Los Angeles were about the fabled Long Tail of publishing.
Here are a couple of things I learned (this is the stats part):
The library market accounts for only 5-10% of sales of bestsellers.
BUT we (public libraries) buy 60% or more of mid-list, literary fiction. And our purchases account for as much as 40% of sales of genre titles, especially in mysteries. Publishers are eager to listen to us--collection development librarians from Seattle, San Francisco, Brooklyn and Minneapolis participated on panels to let publishers know what we are thinking about, looking for and especially what we are buying.
And then there is the Long Tail--here's a statistic that describes its long skinniness quite well: 93% of all ISBN's sold fewer than 1,000 units and accounted for 13% of all sales. That’s mostly not us in libraries. Even more not quite us is the long-tailed, bright-eyed boom this represents in electronic publishing: nearly every fifth person I met was either an author or editor or marketer or packager or distributor of self-published books.
Where is the public library in that conversation? Is that the old pamphlet file? Is it a town meeting in the written word rather than in the buzz of voices? Let me know!
Speakers I heard:
Jeff Bezos, CEO/founder of Amazon.com. Take a look at this week’s New Yorker cover.
That distinctive swirl of the Amazon logo on the box in the UPS guy’s hands: hmm. Long tail? Maybe. And the independent bookseller, opening the door to his shop. Will the woman getting her Amazon.com delivery come in to browse and buy later? Or not? …Bezos says that Kindle buyers/users as a whole buy just as many—or maybe even more—print books of titles they could buy as Kindle editions, as they do Kindle titles. The Kindle is light, and you can buy a book WHEREVER you are in the world. Neil Gaiman loves his Kindle. Jeff Bezos is starting a sub-orbital space program.Perhaps that is so we can all get a better look at the place described as
Hot, flat and crowded. That’s the title of Thomas Friedman’s new book. The working title was Green is the new red, white and blue. A couple of points: China and Qatar each have cities that eat our savings from those energy-saving bulbs for lunch, while nearly all of the continent of Africa is energy-poor.
Sherman Alexie (librarians, books and courage).
Eoin Coifer (Irish, funny, bright).
Neal Gaiman (he used to take his preschool son to ride his tricycle around the nearby churchyard—thus, his new novel The Graveyard Book).
Judy Blume (beautiful; for her, 70 seems to be the new 40).
Alec Baldwin (new book about family law, divorce and parental alienation) (but he is not bitter after the catharsis of writing the book).
Magic Johnson (how understanding his customers at his downtown movie theaters, Starbucks and Burger Kings have made him a successful businessman and urban investor).
Philippa Gregory (do not match wits about the Tudors with this woman).
Andre Dubus (the son: formerly a pugilistic idealist; now a fine novelist).
A panel of audio book producers & deliverers: Demand is high; digital rights management issues remain a puzzle; delivery mechanisms (MP3? CDs? Playaways? cell phones?) are creating multiple format demands; authors love them, unabridged production is expensive.
Other quick takes:
A clip of the stop-action feature film based on Coraline (same animator as "The Nightmare Before Christmas").
Gory, impossible to put down, runaway first novel on its way to a shelf near you: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson.
Nora Rawlinson's new website for collection development librarians (yay!): EarlyWord.com.
Alan Moore's classic title, Watchmen, is seeing a big rise in sales with the anticipation of the film.
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