So much for the enduring nature of the printed word in book form.

Barnes & Noble has decided not to stock physical books published by Amazon. It will offer them online, but not in its brick-and-mortar stores . Comments from readers on the Galleycat.com, which had reported on this, were generally opposed to Barnes & Noble’s actions.

The thing is, how many physical books does this mean? Well, not many for now. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will distribute print books from Amazon Publishing, and that represents only a fraction of what Amazon offers in digital form anyway.

Still, what Barnes & Noble is doing in the name of protecting its interests – or in simply making a statement that it opposes Amazon’s increasing power – is limiting the choice of consumers. What Barnes & Noble is doing in the name of protest is saying that choice is important, but only when the retailer is doing the choosing for the consumer.

As more and more books are being read on electronic devices, the rejection of physical copies of books may not amount to much. But Barnes & Noble’s actions underlines the fraught conditions in the retail marketplace.

What does this mean for authors? At this point not much – unless you’re an author who will have a physical copy of your book distributed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and will need to tell your fans that they can’t find it at their local Barnes & Noble. Not likely, right?

But how authors distribute what they write is important. They want to be heard, to be read, to reach their audience, to make a difference. They have been building a platform to get their ideas across and their book is an extension of themselves. Even if one consumer is unable to find the book he or she wants because a retailer has decided against stocking that book, that consumer – and that retailer – suffer.

That shouldn’t happen.

Choices can be confusing, for authors and for publishers. Maybe less so for consumers, who are calling the shots now that they can opt to receive content in a variety of ways. Consider movies. The American box office just had another dismal weekend, as a highly marketed remake, Footloose, flopped, and The Big Year, a movie starring three highly paid actors – Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson – bombed miserably, pulling in about $3 million. When was the last time you actually went to the movies? When was the last time you were actually interested in going to the movies?

It’s too easy to download at home. It’s too easy to choose another form of entertainment.

The same is true for books. Now, books offer a lot more options, in terms of content, quality and variety, than do movies. But the old forms of books are continuing to be replaced by new forms.

Hardcover books are slipping, paperbacks are falling and e-books are soaring.

According to the American Association of Publishers, hardcover sales rose a surprising 34% in July, compared to the same period last year. But while for the month of July those hardcover sales were up, for the year, they were down nearly 18%.

And sales of e-books rose more than 30%. For the first time, downloads of audio books outsold audio books on CD for the first time. Interestingly, sales of e-books increased year over year, by 150%, for sales of $560.5 million vs. $221.7 million.

Paperbacks Plummet

Paperbacks are suffering, however, declining almost 30%. Readers seem to be eschewing paperbacks and physical audio books for electronic versions.

Good news, right? Well, if you’re a publisher, you’re caught in a muddle – how to package and attract readers, how to choose the right format, how to compete against the growing strength of Amazon which, as we wrote about last week, continues to arm itself against traditional publishers by starting its own imprints. (The New York Times also wrote about that trend in today’s paper.

If you’re an author, you’ve got options. But what do you do with them? Self-publish with Barnes & Noble or on Amazon, ask your agent to consider signing with Amazon, try the traditional publisher route (good luck with that, considering so many are reluctant to sign anyone – they live in fear of making the wrong choice).

I don’t have the answers. No one does. Change is rapid and everyone is trying to figure out what to do. (And the bookstore? Let’s hope it continues, despite a move to electronics.) The thing is, it won’t be any one thing – it will be several. Choices can be confusing. But also exciting.

Yes. And no. In either case, you have to do work yourself on building an audience, finding readers and buyers for your product.

A publisher friend of mine, the head of one of the biggest publishing companies in the world, told me recently that the average book sells, at best, four to five thousand copies. And that the next rung up sells maybe ten thousand. Then it’s up to the bestsellers, with their 40,000-and-up sales. But, as everyone well knows, most books don’t sell.

We were talking about various predictions for the growth of e-books, which is a good thing. A recent article by publishing expert Jason Epstein, in the New York Review of Books, talked about the growth of e-reading and e-publishing, and how that might lead to kind of leveling out: the small author might do better today.

What was also interesting was his writing about the rise of self-publishing, and how the stigma (probably created by publishers) is pretty much gone from it. And in the past, a lot of classics were self published, such as Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

When I mentioned to my friend that self-publishing might take off, he said, understandably, that writers still need publishers to help market books.

Yes, that’s true. But publishers are increasingly called upon to market more and more books with fewer resources. So something’s gotta give. Yep – it’s the author who sells the most who gets the most attention.

That’s why it’s up to authors, as never before, to get to work. Walt Whitman was an expert self-promoter: he got his name out there and his book got read. You can be Walt, too.

Authors need to create an online presence, of course – but do so in a way that engages the audience, and connects with the audience, through their own author sites and through the social media available to them.

This is not hard. But it does take work and concentration.

You can self-publish, but you must also self-promote. And self-promotion isn’t a bad thing – its’ a way of connecting, and to connect you’ve got to start a dialogue with your audience. So start a site, start a blog, connect with the audience, comment on other people’s blogs and posts and link back to yourself, and start engaging. That’s how you do what publishers for all their power, can’t when they have so many authors. They have to make decisions on whom to promote. But you can do it yourself.

Your message is nothing if no one hears it. But you know that.

My success as a dream pusher had way more to do with the Idealistic era we were living in than it did my selling skills. People were willing to believe the fairy tale. All their lives they had been told that they could teach the world to sing in perfect harmony; that a little ‘transactional analysis’ would make everybody OK!;  that a washed up bum like Rocky Balboa could actually become Heavyweight Champion of the World.

In about 2004, people started pushing back. It became increasingly harder to get the authors I was meeting with to buy into the dream. The harder I pushed, the more they pushed back. My assurances were met with skepticism. It seemed their fantasies had been doused by reality.

Looking back on it now, it is easy to see what happened. Marketers spent the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s lifting our spirits and feeding on our imaginations with big promises and images of happy days. By the time the millennium rolled around, we were flat out tired of it. We knew those promises were empty. And it didn’t take a very long look at the world to realize these days were not all happy and free.

Futurist and author Faith Popcorn sensed what was happening as early as 1991. A couple of excerpts from The Popcorn Report, published that year:

“It seemed to me, in the sixties, advertising was the most creative business around. The consumer world was new, wide open; ads were all creativity, no research. I loved the business when I started in it…

…In the nineties, consumers don’t believe the promises anymore. If the ad says, “ninety-out-of-a-hundred people prefer fill-in-the-blank,” we cynically assume that those 90 are the advertiser’s 90 best friends and relatives. We know that numbers can be interpreted to mean almost anything. So, the situation now is that numbers have lost their credibility, and yet creativity isn’t strong enough to stand on its own.”

As a result, I stopped pushing dreams several years ago. Promote A Book’s ‘best seller’ business model has been replaced by one that helps authors use their books to further their platforms and businesses. Instead of getting authors onto best seller lists and then wishing them luck, I show them how to use their books to “join the conversation” and connect with their audiences. More pull, less push. It seems more real, more authentic this way. And I seem to enjoy it more.

What about you? Did you ever “buy the dream” they were selling? Leave a few words and tell us about it.

The challenge for publishers is that they still think along old lines: words.

Today’s audience loves words. But they also like to experience them in different ways.

And today’s audience has embraced new technology faster than publishers seem to.

It’s a question of listening to the audience, of course.

It’s also a question of acting on what you hear.

Books can be interactive. And not just children’s books. Interactive books of all types can be doorways into a greater reading experience from Dr. Seuss to Lewis Carroll – and, one hopes, contemporary authors. Of course, “War and Peace” might not need additional content. But then again – wouldn’t it be great to have interactive maps of the Napoleonic campaigns? Wouldn’t it be great to imagine the characters and to see the landscapes – one can do both.

Sure, the Kindle, the iBook application, and a few other readers work well on the iPad. But they don’t take advantage of the potential. They don’t think outside the page.

There are a lot of ways to approach this. With an iPad app, readers have a chance to give instant feedback to creators, if they view the comments section. Most app makers do, but do most publishers?

Sure. Right.

But that would mean rethinking. The artist David Hockney has used the iPad to create a whole new series of paintings. He’s in his 70s, and this great contemporary artists gets it. He understands the vast potential of new technology. But then – he’s creative. He’s not a publisher.

Publishers are still wondering how to monetize electronic books. One way would be to take advantage of electronics. Electronics allow an interactive experience, and the iPad is perhaps the most sensual of electronic products: imagine sliding your fingers along the text and visualizing something, or even emailing a comment immediately, as you can with online newspapers.

It’s the rare magazine that allows this. And do you know of a book that does it?

No? Maybe not yet. But surely – if you are listening to your audience, you know what they want. They want you to be present.

A good way is to be present via current technology – and to anticipate what your audience wants. You can do that by listening to them – when someone listens to his audience, and really responds, it’s as if he can read their minds. It doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to new technology – it’s just that you have to be aware of it, and harness it. It’s called being present.

You don’t need an iPad to figure that out.

Let’s start with the first step and see how far we get today.

Step 1. Define the Problem.

I need to come up with questions about problems I see in book publishing.

Are traditional publishing models becoming mostly unviable?

Is book publishing going the way of the Internet, much like music and video?

How much money is made from electronic books?

How much money is made from traditional book publishing?

Is publishing a book, online or offline, a viable source of income for authors?

Who makes the most money directly from book sales? Is it the publishers, authors, distributors, or retailers?  How much money does each of them make for offline & online book sales?

How else do authors make money from book publishing?

What steps are involved in the traditional publishing of a book?

What steps are involved in the online book publishing process?

What’s the disparity between online book sales and physical book sales?

I think I have enough questions to help me figure out what types of data I will need to look for.  I want to make it clear that my main focus is on the viability of traditional publishing and the viability of online publishing.

I will define viability as the ability to generate profit.  To determine viability, we’ll need to analyze book sales statistics across the board.

Naturally, the next step is observation and data gathering.  The next hurdle to leap over will be in obtaining the data for analysis.  I will also need to learn more about statistics to properly analyze my data.  If my analyses are flawed, then I’ll botch the scientific method.

Can anyone point me to where I can get the data I need?  Does anyone have any data they can share with me?  Does anyone else want to get in on this project?

Becoming the top dog won’t be easy.  The book publishing industry is rife with competition.  The current Alphas have a lot at stake and they won’t give up their thrones so easily.

The sad thing is, they have no choice.  The bigwigs seem to be in denial that their precious traditions are going to become obsolete (or incredibly marginalized) by Internet technology and social media.  This guy gets the idea.

At this point, it’s important to ask how the hell we’re going to rise above them.  It’s a pretty good question and there’s no easy-bake answer.  What I can tell you is that I’m going to employ every piece of advice I’ve given in my series of posts here.

I am going to prove to you this is the best way, and I’m ready to take every fiery comment that comes my way.

Do you want to be one of the best? Come along for the ride.  I suggest that you subscribe to us and watch the “7 Myths of the Book Industry” video.

Do what I did.  Look at the facts and see what conclusions you can draw from them.  If you think you’ve got some good ideas on how to rise to the top, let me know.

It really shouldn’t be the kind of question we have to ask ourselves, but publishers, like movie studios again, feel that the gift-giving season is the one chance to recoup, the big chance to get back what they spent the rest of the year on underperforming books that failed to find an audience.

It says something that the surprise hit of the holiday season is the first volume of Mark Twain‘s autobiography. The University of California Press, which published the autobiography – a century after the great author’s death, as per his wishes – didn’t realize (in all its ivory-tower naïveté) that Twain’s trenchant musings on his life, his work, his era, were just the thing to appeal to readers today, and to gift-givers at the end of the year. Why? We want what’s real. And Twain was nothing if not real.

So far, the publisher has had to go back to press a few times, and there are now something like 600,000 copies in print. What does this say about today’s readers? It says that Twain is indeed timeless – that he appeals to the contemporaries today as much as he did people of yesteryear – but it also says that good writing speaks to generations whatever the time of year.

Twain engaged with his readers. He was a man of his time and ahead of it – he published one of the first presidential memoirs (U.S. Grant’s), and started his own publishing company, and did what he could to engage his audience. He wasn’t always successful – who is? – but he was memorable

You can be too – if you listen to your audience, if you dare to make a stand, if you speak, like Twain always did – the truth.

More than the greatness of his writing, it’s the transparency of his thinking that makes Twain a man for our age. And a man for the gift-giving season. I doubt that the University of California Press thought it had such a big hit on its hands – it was probably wishful thinking that it published the book toward the end of the year and hoped for a few thousand copies to be sold. But Twain probably knew better a century ago: he wanted to be heard, but more than anything he wanted to be connected, and be honest. He probably felt it would be better to wait a hundred years, before people were ready for his brand of truth.

You don’t have to wait that long. You can connect with your audience, too. If you speak the truth. At any time of the year.

Publishers hate awards ceremonies almost as much as the public ignores who wins book awards.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Well – the awards ceremony circuit is pretty boring to begin with. Sure, it’s a chance to “network,” as if chatting awkwardly at a cocktail party while looking over someone’s shoulder to see if someone less boring or desperate is nearby. And it’s a chance for publishers and editors to lament recent changes in the industry, the decline of civilization as we know, the unfortunate rise of e-everything.

Oh, and there are the authors. Hopeful. Cynical. Maybe really grateful to be among the chosen few whom the elite of the publishing world decide to honor with an award that’s remembered only by agents trying to sell the winning or nominated author’s next book.

Awards are for a person’s CV, and for the chance to get an obit in a big newspaper – because you’ve demonstrated that something about what you’ve done, or about the friends you’ve made or the way you’ve carried yourself, was enough to get people to vote in your general direction. But as we all know, awards are not about the quality.

Can you name who won the last Academy Awards for best actor or actress or film? Can you remember the last winner of the Pulitzer Prize for…anything? How about the National Book Awards? Do you recognize the nominees? And what about the biggie? Who won the Nobel Prize for literature a few weeks ago? If you said Mario Vargas Llosa, congratulations – you can enter trivia contests.

Now, of course, people who win awards are often very talented.

But awards are for the insiders. Not for the readers or the world in general. Of course, it might make a person feel good to see and dismiss (or even like) an award-winning movie (“It must not be as boring as we think, it won an award!”), or to disagree with the received opinion after reading an award-winning book (“I can’t believe they gave this turkey a prize!“).

And, of course, awards are about marketing. Something other than the blurb from a friend of the author to put on the cover.

What about the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, of other authors whose work might be good, but who connect not with critics, or with awards committees, but with the public?

That’s where readers come in, and that’s where communicating with readers comes in. Sure it’s great to get a prize. But it’s better to have an audience, and a platform for your ideas. And to engage that audience with something more than a certificate for having attracted the notice of a coterie of special-interest groups who want to pat themselves on the back for having recognized your worth, even if only a few dozen people actually read what you wrote.

While I’m not certain this is true, I do believe that December 12, 2012, will mark the end of the publishing world as we know it.

I’ve been a maverick in the book industry for more then a decade. I make people uncomfortable. I speak the truth. Hearing about change (and making change) is always tough, especially in an industry that, let’s face it, hasn’t changed much since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440.

Last summer, I proclaimed “Book Publishing 2.0 Is Now.”

At Book Expo America in 2009 and 2010 I spent some time ranting at publishers, predicting what the future of publishing would look like, and suggesting what I would do if I were a publisher today looking to preserve both reputation and business. Few listened.

But this time, unlike my attempts to reform the industry in years past, publishers actually flocked to me like flies to honey. But they didn’t like what I had to say.

Even today many of my friends among big and midsized New York-based publishers listen to me — but they aren’t willing to accept my news.

Here’s the headline: Traditional Book Publishing is DEAD.

I’m not the only one who’s been telling this story over the last couple of years.

For example:

• On what became known as publishing’s Black Tuesday, in December 2008 Random House completely reorganized and Simon & Schuster laid off a large part of its staff.
• Last year, Steven Covey and his Go digital publishing company made an exclusive deal with Amazon.com to have Amazon sell two of his bestsellers – “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and “Principle-Centered Leadership” — solely in digital form.
• Recently, best-selling author Seth Godin announced he’s “Moving On” and will no longer publishing with traditional publishers following the publication of “Linchpin.” (Also read his follow-up interview on Galley Cat.)
• And Mitch Joel is correct when he says, “This is a lot bigger then Seth Godin…”  It’s about transparency and talking directly with consumers.
• It used to be that 20,000 to 30,000 books were published a year. In 2009, there were 760,000 new books published. That’s more than a two thousand percent increase. Staggering, isn’t it? (Download Bowker’s 2009 Book Industry Essential Facts)
• Yet amid this torrent of product, B&N is losing money and even this titan of brick-and-mortar bookselling sees the writing on the wall regarding the future of traditional publishing (and book-buying)
• And of course you’ve heard of big losses at Borders, major executive turnover there and job losses at both the corporate level and at individual stores

I could go on and on with the doom-and-gloom of an industry whose only good news is digital publishing. Which, of course, scares traditional publishers to death.

So let me tell you what I’ve been telling publishers for the last two years, that they, and you, need to WAKE UP and hear.

By the end of 2012 the dynamics in publishing and the economy will have shifted so much that traditional publishers will either be acquiring emerging publishing technology and evolving — or going out of business.

• By the end of 2012, 50% or more of all books will be sold in a digital or electronic format.
• By the end of 2015, 80% or more of all books will be sold in digital or electronic format
• By the end of 2015, “new” digital books will be sold at an average of $0.99 or less

Publishers need to realize that they are on the same path the music industry has been on for a decade. They need to avoid making the same mistakes record companies made and instead focus on a more “open” source form of publishing the recognizes the money isn’t in the book content but what that content leads to.

We should look to Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress.com and WordPress.org, and to a younger generation for the future of our business and publishing models. It is rumored that Matt turned down a $200 million offer to buy WordPress. At the recent Engage Today 2010 conference in Calgary, Canada, Matt neither confirmed nor denied this, but he did say that had he turned down an offer of $200 million, it would have been because he was concerned the buyer might take his open-source publishing model and turn it into a closed-source publishing model.

The future of publishing is open source, free content leading into premium content.

I know I’ve come across as a doomsayer, but trust me when I say that I really believe that these are exciting times. Because once again, content is what counts. For so long book publishing was all about marketing: those with the money were those who succeeded. Good content was the exception, not the rule.

The Internet, the iPad, the Kindle, the smartphone and other such devices have leveled the playing field.

Online content is king, as we have already begun to see with e-books and digital books. Digital books will be judged by their content, rightfully so, and the long-tail effect will result in more content actually being read and consumed then is currently done with traditionally bound books.

Again, I am thrilled to be part of this exciting age for books and for content. If publishers would stop flogging their dead horse and really identify what they had to offer (and how to offer it), they too would be excited.

I’m looking forward to December 12, 2012, the Death of the Print Book Industry. Who’d like to participate in a funeral to celebrate this great industry’s death, and to proclaim the birth of a new one?