Online Book Publishing Vs. Print Publishing
Book Publishing Companies Thriving Both in Print and Online
Oct 21, 2009
While book publishing companies who produce print books once ruled the publishing world, online book publishing companies are quickly gaining ground with a public that is getting more and more accustomed to reading online. Print publishing is still by far the largest type of book publishing, but online book publishing is gaining market share as the number of online publishing companies ands online customers increase.
Print Publishing
Print publishing is a notoriously difficult route for first-time authors. The glut of manuscripts coming into even the smallest print publishing companies has made most of the major print book publishing companies to require agented submissions to cut down on the sheer volume of manuscripts coming in from people trying to get published.
While many print industries are facing massive layoffs and closings, book publishing companies have relatively steady sales numbers. Print books are still a multi-billion dollar industry and sales of print books in bookstores and in online stores are enough support several large big-box bookstore chains.
But, Internet publishing may change those numbers. Among adults in the U.S., 15 percent have already read an ebook, and those numbers are growing. According to Book Business magazine, the demand for ebooks has doubled every 18 months and this trend is expected to continue.
Print Publishing and Online Publishing Combine
Because online book publishing is growing so quickly, print publishing companies are now entering the Internet publishing realm. Book publishing companies like Simon and Schuster and HarperCollins have started publishing their own ebooks online as well as keeping their print publishing arms running.
In many cases, book publishing companies are publishing both print and online versions of the same books. According to Book Business, HarperCollins is now publishing 95 percent of its books online in digital form. Their ebook sales figures rose about 400 percent from June 2008 to June 2009.
New ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle are making it easier to read ebooks anytime and anywhere. Ebook versions of print books are increasingly being made available to Kindle readers, and works that are exclusively for the Kindle are being published.
While print publishing remains a steady industry, Internet publishing has quickly made ebooks the fastest growing part of the book market, according to InformationWeek. Readers today have a choice between buying their desired book in a bookstore, ordering the print book online, downloading the book and reading it on a computer screen or downloading it to a hand-held ebook reader.
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