Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Enough already!

Nobody mulls things over more than me. Just ask my wonderful forbearing wife.

I chew and chew on something, spit it out, chew it some more, until I've gummed every morsel.

But even I am getting sick of the sheer volume of speculation about digital books and comics.

Every site I go to. Extrapolating from very limited evidence.

It's a bit like trying to figure out global warming from watching the local weather.

Frankly, I wasn't really worried about books until this started happening. I felt books and comics were going to be just fine, left alone.

But they aren't being left alone. They're being pushed off a cliff.

I'm already figuring that it's going to be much harder to ever sell an existing bookstore or comic store -- no matter how well it's doing, because of the perception that e-books are taking over.

So far -- 1% of comic sales are digital.

Arggghhh.

Oh, well. I'll just keep adjusting.

5 comments:

emily♥ said...

You sound like a tobacco chewer. Hope you brush your teeth. :)

Just kidding. Not really.

We just talked about this in Economics. My class was like "KINDLE IS TAKING OVER OMGWTFBBQ!!!!1!!!"

And I was like "NEVARRRRRRRR!" Nothing can beat the smell of a new book, or crinkling the pages, or ruining the brand new spine. Psh.

Anonymous said...

I plan on moving to Bend and opening a comic shop in April. Any suggestions?
I'm going to call it 'buster-bilbos' emporium of home entertainment.
I would like feedback on location, and stock?

Anonymous said...

Wow, Dunc, you are pulling in some colorful commenters.

Duncan McGeary said...

Buster is that.

H. Bruce Miller said...

"Nothing can beat the smell of a new book, or crinkling the pages, or ruining the brand new spine. Psh."

Why do people enjoy breaking the back of a new book? I admit that's something I can't do with my Nook. But I never liked to do it with printed books either.

I think e-readers are going to make publishing ephemera -- mass-market fiction and popular nonfiction -- obsolete quite soon. But the kind of books that people want to keep on their shelves and read many times, or just display, will stick around.