[applause] >> to find out more about governor deval patrick, visit mass.gov. >> booktvs has over 100,000 twitter followers. be a part of the excitement, follow booktv on twitter to get publishing news, scheduling updates, author information and talk directly with authors during our live programming. twitter.com/booktv. >> we asked, what are you reading this summer? here's what you had to say.

>> send us a tweet at booktv using hash tag summer reading to let us know what you plan on reading this summer. you can also e-mail us, booktv at c-span.org. >> up next on booktv, author michael norris explores the relationship between physical bookstores and digital products and discusses the findings from be simba information's trade e-book publishing 2011. this is about 50 minutes. >> good morning. >> good morning. >> my name is michael norris, and i am a senior analyst at simba information. i'd like to welcome you to you bought your e-book, digital books and brick and mortar bookstores.

i'm going to talk for maybe 20-25 minutes max, and then at the end i'll open the floor for questions, comments and, hopefully, a discussion. just to give you a little bit of background about simba, we're primarily known for our independent analysis of the book publishing industry through our monthly periodical book publishing report which has been around for the past 35 years. we've also recently introduce add web component with searchable archives for subscribers. we also do a number of syndicated research reports, and some of the ones you've probably heard of include trends in if tradebook retailing and trade electronic book publishing. and we also do some consulting and specialty research on a very limited basis. and, um f there's anything i want you to remember about simba, it is that we are truly independent. we don't have any backing from any publisher group, any retailer group, any software group, any hardware group. we don't have any stake in any

action that you take, so whenever you want independent and hype-free analysis, you can always turn to us. now, in order to start talking about what's actually going on with e-books and retailing as it relates to physical stores, we have to actually look at e-books specifically, and we really have to learn quickly how much we're misreading about what's actually going on in the market. because there's so much hype, so much conjecture and there's so much speculation i even can't keep up with it sometimes. and one of the ways it actually has been misread lately just to name a couple is that we're overstating the influence of new gadgets as they're coming on to the marketplace in terms of where they're going to sit with e-book consumers. now, we actually did a proprietary, nationally-representative study when the ipad first came out, and we discovered that only about 40 -- about 40% of adults who own an ipad, 40% of them haven't accessed or bought a

single e-book on the device. so in terms of the transformative power of the devices themselves, it's a little bit hard to get a read on that. and the other area where things get misread is, um, when a company, oh, i don't know, say an online retailer says they're selling more digital books than they are selling print books, and it's all over the popular press, it's very important to remember that i have never seen a press release from an independent bookstore that says that they are selling zero kindle book for every 100 print titles that they're selling because it really is a very specific way of looking at i. and can the other problem with that -- and the other problem with that kind of comparison is that e-books, especially in some stores like the kindle store, are very different from that of physical books. because simba does or did, i think we're still doing this, is a list capture of the e-book bestseller list once a week,

same time. we record all 100 books that are on there, we write down the prices, the genres, the categories, and at the end of the year we've got 50,52 weeks of data. about a quarter of the books on amazon's top 100 list were a dollar or less. and when you're talking about selling more e-book units than physical book units, i have no doubt that amazon is telling the truth, but we really have to look at it from a fresh perspective all the time. um, consumers aren't as hungry and sophisticated as we like to think they are. i'm actually going to cover that more later. but the other thing is, and this is actually increasingly hard to quantify, the mechanism of book discovery is very much interconnected between print and tingal. now, i always bump into people who own a kindle, they love it, they evangelize about it and say how transformative it is to be able to see somebody with a print book and download it at

that appointment and start -- moment and start reading it. there's no doubt that is transformative, but it's only transformative if person with the kindle sees somebody with a print book in the first place. [laughter] so just -- and, also, i can't tell you how many independent booksellers have mentioned to me they've seen people walk into their stores to browse, scribble things down, maybe take cell phone camera pictures of books then walk out again, presumably to buy the book elsewhere, possibly electronically. that part of it, but there's also people like myself who when i call elm street books looking for a new book, i have amazon open to make sure i have the author's name spelled right. so the whole world of discovery can't really be looked at in individual piles, all right? everything is connected, and everything is related. and it's really important to think about as we talk about the overall health of the industry. now, whenever i give a presentation, i really like to

start off with some great consumer research from expeer onsimmons, they do an outstanding survey about every three months, and the data has always been reliable, it's been consistent, and we absolutely love looking at this question first every time it comes in because this is really where we all have to start anytime we want to look at books. did you buy a book in the last 12 months? any kind of book, any format, whatever. did you buy any book in the last 12 months? and all of us are in this room right now because we're passion anytime about books in some form or another. but about 100 million people in this country didn't buy a single solitary book in 2010. and that number has actually been ticking up slightly over the past years, and that really worries me. because if we're talking about ways to grow this market, i really think that we ought to start looking at the people who

aren't giving us a second thought. and it's also the people who don't care about three for the price of two, it's also the people who don't read or follow author blogs at all. it's a lot of people that just don't care about this content, and we've got to figure out ways to reach them. now, just to switch back to, um, simba information's proprietary study, i wrote a question down on the white board in my office about three years ago, and the question was who buys these things anyway. and that was, basically, the start of what became the trade e-book publishing report series and the 2011 edition of trade e-book publishing just came out last month. but one of the things that we do is we have our own nationally-representative study. we're now doing it quarterly. and we ask, do you buy e-books? yes or no. and after they answer, if they answer, yes, we'll say, well, what devices do you use to read, how many e-books have you bought

and so forth, and it really provides the proper sense, i think, of scale that the market desperately needs quite a bit of the time. now, we also because it's a quarterly survey, we get to tweak questions and add things, but the e-book question has always been consistent the three-plus years we've been doing it. and we're also, of course, asking about print book and consumption habits too. and it's very interesting to realize that print book buyers outnumber e-book buyers about 5 to 1. and we spend -- i'm not standing next to the podium, so i can't point it out to you -- but we spend an awful lot of time over on the far side, don't we? because, frankly, there's quite a bit happening in that space, and we always want to discuss it, we always want to go over it, and we always obsess about the new technologies that are involved. questions at the end. >> i just wanted to know what -- [inaudible] >> 2010. >> [inaudible] >> 2010, yes. but, um, it's really important

to consider the perspective, especially when there have been so many amazing vabses in digital -- advances in digital books over the past few years because there are still a large number of consumers that just are not giving up on print. and i don't think that the industry should as well because i've been watching a number of different data points about the percentage of people who identify themselves as book buyers, and i've been watching print books mostly stagnate or decline, and i've been watching e-books grow. and i think the industry owes it to itself for making both of those grow without legislating one from the other. um, as i said, one of the things that the simba survey does is we actually ask what devices do you use to read and consume your electronic books? and we break these out a little bit further in the report in the terms of the individual devices,

but when we first came out with this report, we surprised a lot of people when we showed that the personal computer was the number one most popular piece of hardware used to consume an e-book. that was the whole year of 2008. and it was leading again in 2009. the thing that a lot of people forget is that britain, is that e-books have been around for a good long time, and the other thing that people forget is that a lot of people have a very casual relationship with print book content. that means a lot of the readers that you think you have, they're very intermittent, they'll buy one book here, one book there, and they're not the most active participants in the market, but they're still active. they still, you know, plunk down money at some point or another to buy books. and if they're only going to buy a small number of books, it makes perfect sense that they're going to read on a device they already have, and in this case it's the personal computer.

the personal computer's lead has really fallen, however, over the past couple years, noticeably fallen. and part of that has to do with the plethora of new devices, less expensive devices, very well-made devices that are coming out, and they're marketed in very different ways sometimes. and i'm desperately interested in what's going to happen with the mobile phone category. we actually have the new quarterly survey coming out, actually not coming out, it's being administered, literally, as we speak. and probably in the june or july issue we're going to run this information again because the mobile phone category is something i'm particularly interested in terms of device growth. but it's also incredibly worth noting where barnes & noble sits in all this because the nook and the nook color, let's start with the nook rather, has only been around for a very short period

of time. and when you're looking at this information, you really start to think about how these devices are sold and how they actually make it into the hands of the 20-some-odd million e-book consumers there are out there now. now, this sounds incredibly obvious, the first bullet, but if you buy something on amazon, you can't touch it first. the, i think the most overlooked story in e-commerce over the past few years has been amazon's move to push the kindle into stores like walmart, target and best buy. it is, obviously, an incredibly intelligent retailing strategy, but also says to me that there are certain areas of the shopping experience that e-commerce does not cover. so part of it has to do with amazon just wanting people to be able to handle the devices and get a feel for the devices before they have a chance to buy

them. we did a survey of kindle only, the kindle hardware owners, the people who actually own the actual devices in late 2009, and we found that about 60-some percent of them bought the kindle as a leap of faith. they researched it aggressively, they saw it on the web, and they decided they want to get it. everyone else either saw a friend with it, got it as a gift and so on. and the other thing to remember about, um, devices, and this actually feeds back into the earlier slide, is that consumers aren't always asking the questions about them that we think they're asking. and this, obviously, feeds back into the consumer not being as hungry or sophisticated as we think they are. and one of the places where i think, you know, some stores have gone wrong with this is worlders group -- borders group approach to e-books last year. at one point, i don't know if

you remember, they were carrying seven e-book devices. and last year just about every news site in existence had these, you know, i think wildly optimistic speculations about whether e-readers and reading devices were going to go. so what borders did, and i actually have it here for those of you in the back, you're out of luck. but they had all seven of the reader lined up at the top, and all this excellent, you know, really nerdy information like connectivity, memory, battery life size, weight, everything that you could possibly imagine is just right there at your fingertips. and, um, i'm not going to say how this strategy played out, but i'll let you all draw your own conclusions. [laughter] but the thing is, the thing is that consumers aren't always asking these sort of questions about the devices. the thing that i found amazing

when i put on, like, jeans and t-shirt and walk into barnes & noble and feign interest and understanding in e-books is how emotional the questions are when people are actually, you know, standing around the tables handling the devices, and they're asking themselves, how is this thing going to feel when i'm lie anything bed at night holding it on my elbows? is this going to fit in my favorite pocketbook? what if a dog bites it? there's a lot of little questions that they have in their heads that doesn't have a whole lot to do with battery life, screen size or resolution. so the thing was that this is the kind of thing that you want if you've already decided that you want an e-reader. this is exactly the kind of thing that you want. but for just about everybody else or at least the people who have, you know, purchased a nook or a nook color at barnes barne& noble, the device they could handle it, they could figure out how much it weighed, they could imagine themselves, you know,

using the interface to shop for a book, look for a book and buy one, and, you know, it worked for quite a number of people. now, the relationship that a consumer has with print books off line often, i cover that just a little bit here. a lot of people in this room are very passionate readers, and if they are passionate readers, chances are excellent they're going to shop like passionate readers and buy book one right after another. not everybody necessarily works that way, and it's just going to be really important to remember that as, you know, as some of the devices actually get cheap. cheaper. now, as i said, there are about five print book buyers for every one e-book buyers, and if you do have presence or are starting to sw intr into digital, it's

important to try not to make the two sides appear as separate islands and not to jump up and down on borders once again, but an issue that happened with that company was that they created an alliance with amazon back in, i think, august of 2001. and they, basically, outsourced their entire e-commerce solution to amazon. so if you went to borders, you'd get the borders team but amazon site, and borders got some kind of a cut or commission of the deal. so that's an effective way to build up an e-commerce strategy without spending a lot of money, but the amazon/borders site had no reason to feed the physical store side and vice versa. and i have no idea how effective this has been for barnes & noble, but one of the things that they've been trying to do is, actually, encourage the people who actually already own the devices to reenter the stores for exclusive content,

exclusive coupons and just some other gimmick key things to get them in the store because as everybody who's bought a book unexpectedly knows, you know, if you're in a really good quality store and you just happen to come across a book that you think is the perfect gift for your sister or the like, you're going to buy it. and it was a completely unexpected purchase, and you've just fed into the publishing industry that we all know today. now, i did, i was talking about how the print book buyers do mimic e-book buyers. like, i remember seeing e-book bestseller lists from 11 years ago, and it looked very much like it except there'd be a random dictionary on the top ten because the people at the time appreciated the search about of electronic books. but as far as the buyers themselves are concerned, we have to remember they're a very different animal from time to time than a print book buyer. and one of the things we've found is that people who buy

e-books, when they make the decision to buy, they want as little to stand in their way as possible. i cannot stress that enough. because when we go into bookstores or if we're, you know, tooling around online looking for something to buy, you know, we'll check out the different links, we'll hop from one place to another. you know, if we're in a physical bookstore, we'll flirt with the bookseller, and we'll really just take a lot of time doing that. but i've found with e-books it's a little bit different. and one of the things that we found to actually back that up comes from some psychographic information that we compiled, and i can't remember the exact figures, but i think there was a statement that went somewhere along the lines of i return to web sites that make it easy for me to find what i need. and i think 60-some-odd percent of adults agreed with that. but when you narrow it down the just to people who buy books,

any format, i think it went up to about 75%. and then we did something a little bit different. we narrowed it down just to the people who only buy books online, only loyal to the online channel, and the number went up to somewhere, i think, along the lines of the high 80s. so when a person is online and they're at the cash rebelster online -- register online, they're going to be impatient. and if you have an e-book solution, there's all kinds of technical discussions about e-book solutions at this conference. but if you have an e-book solution, you've really got to see how easily it responds to a person going in and shopping. and that, and part of that involves buying an e-book from your own store and then going to amazon and doing the exact same thing and going to barnes & noble and doing the same thing and asking yourself objectively which one you like the best. and finally, the last bullet, um, all the pieces matter. i like that because it's, you yu

know, a line from david simon's series, "the wire." but, also, we really do have to remember something important, and i actually brought it up at the conference, at the presentation i did last year. nobody buys e-books for interesting reasons, all right? that's a really unfortunate truth about the most fascinating area of the market. no one buys books for interesting reasons. and just to give you an idea of this is that my wife reads books, e-books on her iphone only. she hats no interest in getting a device, but he has expressed interest she'd use one if i were to buy it for her as a gift. [laughter] however, i've had her use different e-book interfaces and tell me what she thinks of them, and one of the things that she doesn't understand is that when she buys a book from one site, she can't turn the screen and look at the text in landscape.

it's a little 99-cent feature that we all, everyone who owns an iphone -- this is not an iphone, but it passes for one anyway, that all of us understand and we expect. my wife has small hands, she hates holding her phone like this. so if solution does not involve the ability just for that little rotation, she's not going to shop there. and if e-book reading solutions do not have that, i don't think it's a very competitive solution. i don't think it's up-to-date enough, and i think it really needs to be corrected. now, just to wrap up, um, you're going to hear a lot of very enthusiastic tech consultants saying otherwise, but we are always going to have print. you can write that down, and i will sign my name under it. we are always going to have print, but we're also going to have e-books, and we're also going to have this kind of conversation trying to figure out where one relates to the other. and if you are a retailer,

whether you sell your book or not, whether you have no interest whatsoever in digital, you've got to work really hard to communicate your value and be completely noisy and unapologetic about doing so. because if you don't define your value, somebody who doesn't like you will. and finally, the last thing i wanted to bring up is, um, you know, we are going to talk about where e-books are going to be next year, five years from now, what have you. but we've got to remember that all of these technological changes that we've had, that we've seen so far tends to shorten the distance between the consumer and the cash register. and the thing is books are sold one at a time to one person at a time. and a lot of that involves individuals talking passionately about one book to one person and

actually selling the value of one book because that's really the way this thing is moving forward. and that's all that i had for you, and i'd love to take any questions if you, if you have them. yes. >> how do you read the, um, there was a story i think in "the wall street journal" yesterday about the nook color being a very important vehicle for women's magazines. how do you read that? i mean, it appears to me that the e-book vendors are concentrating now on periodicals and things like that, and books become lower and lower on the scale. >> well, that's something that watching, definitely, because i saw that story as well. i think that, you know, the u.s. consumer culture, especially the tech culture, nobody cares anymore what a device does. they really only care about what else it can do. so there's just a lot of

pressure on all these hardware manufacturers to create one extra capability, you you know,e extra free application of angry birds, and it just kind of keeps adding up. >> with. [inaudible] the nook has sold, now, a million and a half and yearly subscriptions to women's magazines. that seemed like a pretty significant step in the direction, in a different direction than books. >> well, i can't speak to how magazines are going to perform in the future. if you have -- because i have had a chance to review the nook color. i thought it was an okay device. to its credit, magazines do look good on it, and a lot of people find it very easy to subscribe to things they like. we'll just have to see how they take it to in the future.

yeah. >> on the survey where 105 million americans didn't buy a book in 2010, was there any follow-up question as to whether they were using the library or anything like that? >> no. it's actually good that you're bringing that up because that's just people who buy. and one of the things i should have mentioned when that slide came up is that all numbers that you see about the publishing industry only tell half the story at best. and, um, books from the library and books as gifts because a lot of people in the 118 million consumer category that do buy books, they'll give books as gifts to, you know, everybody else. so it is definitely a very, you know, tricky area when you're talking about how people are discovering content and actually getting to books. yeah. >> take out the fiction e-books divided by the total fiction sales of all fiction books, what would be the, for example, in

the nonfiction area, what would be the percentage of e-book sales on regular trade nonfiction categories? >> we actually cover that in trade e-book publishing 2011 was we actually expanded the category analysis of that. i don't have that off the top of my head, but i do know that fiction, obviously, has just been a huge area for e-books. i don't really know if that's a function of them being e-books, i think it's a function of consumer mood because, you know, what we found in the past is that during times of economic stress a lot of people, you know, continue to turn to books for escape. and can the other thing that, you know, we've noticed looking at a few of the nonfiction categories very carefully is some of them are very vulnerable to the pressures of the web, more so than others. and, you know, specifically trade reference travel and also, of course, everyone's wonder what's going on with cookbooks because there's always the potential of consumers forgoing that segment. >> do you have any

approximations, though, as to what the percentages -- >> i don't have off the top of my head, sorry. are there any other questions? yes, in the back. >> with. [inaudible] from home to travel to work to leisure, and they want to change the devices. how do you think that is impacting business? >> yeah. i don't know about the cloud. i mean, i know that it's a term that everyone is throwing around. it's sort of, you know, the cloud has always been around, but it's sort of defined like clean coal in terms of its actual application. it's very broad. [laughter] but there is definitely something to that because, um, there is a problem with, you know, consumers just adopting these gadgets, and then they just have this increasingly shorter shelf life. and i think that, you know, the cloud is being pushed as sort of a solution to a problem that they created. because, you know, i hate that some of the devices i buy cannot

have their battery changed and can't, you know, can't be upgraded. and sometimes if they are around too long, they just can't be serviced or fixed anymore. so it's -- there's definitely something to that. but, um, i'll -- we'll have to see where it goes because it's still very early in the cloud's development. yeah. >> you referred to how many -- [inaudible] ..

>> they are already committed readers. so we are enough they will buy a lot. if you look at people who buy a note compared to everyone else he will get completely skewed results. via the x. factor is the actual relative cost of the unit because of people are buying more kindle singles, it thereby more candle singles that pushes the number of units of even though the dollars spent on books is going down. it's complicated to look out. >> has there been research done on geographic purchasing at the readers? i probably saw more today on the subway coming in here and i seen in western massachusetts my entire life. >> we have looked at data in terms of metro in region. we also have to look at some of

the devices themselves to see how they are being marketed. and how aggressively they are being pushed in cities. i wrote -- i wrote in a to a couple weeks ago but also the year before when the ipad first came out and i peddled through all five euros of manhattan and i lost track count of the ipads. the enormous displays that the ipad had truly arrived in manhattan. and if you're a commuter come if you're a traveler and new gadgets are your thing and you are well educated and have disposable income, you tend to want to look for the. but like i said the relation to consumer has with books is very complicated at times. a lot of people live where they buy because they have a store they like. and if they choose to buy with an ipad, it's just because of some other little boring thing about their lifestyle that makes sense to them. but there's definitely a lot more i think activity or the

tablet devices in cities and our elsewhere. any other questions? [inaudible] we have tremendous growing interest of the reader -- the reader. [inaudible] i didn't hear the whole question isn't how they're being used in libraries? >> is there a possibility -- [inaudible] >> i think some libraries have

been doing that on a limited basis. they've been getting -- i know some of them have sony readers and some have other devices. and also when it comes to content is also a device called plate away which is individually loaded audio both the comes with his own miniature device with headphones and you can check it out at the library. so it's something to watch, but once again, with the technology change as rapidly as it does, there could probably be a lot of resistance because, you know, no one wants to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to outfit a library with a device that it might be declared obsolete, or by the time the patrons get around to using it, nobody will care anymore. yes? >> i would just like to follow up on that question. so we have less problems than buying the devices and buying

the e-books. [inaudible] >> what is the most popular price point for nonfiction e-books? >> well, i did a whole presentation on prices last year, and i don't know, i will never pay $9.99 for e-books. and it has been a lot of pressure on prices, but in terms of actual average price, there's far too many variables to consider out of, you know, tens and tens of thousands of nonfiction books that there are. i think that the price point at the end of the day needs to be set by the publisher. and the thing everyone needs to remember is it's the value of the content is, you know, displayed out right before the

reader, they may not balk at a price that is more than $9.99. that's like something that happened to me not long ago, as is a book that was advertised and i've no idea how much it cost but i knew i needed to have it right in. it was kind of a mindset i wish i would have more often. >> a lot of which alleges a made a point that there's a lot of room for physical bookstore plus the e-book accommodation. but people like mike saying if 20% or 50% of the physical bookstore market goes away, the physical bookstore is in financial jeopardy, the question is, the data you have, the research, does indicate that that could happen? and -- >> what was the scenario of? >> is basically 15-20% of the market for physical bookstore one way because people were going to the reader or kindle or

nook are whatever. without any kind of physical connection. it 15 or 20% of the existing market goes away, that the bookstore is a financial jeopardy or unsustainable. and it goes where. >> i'm very reluctant to paint bookstores financial picture with such broad strokes. i mean, obviously there are store such as barnes & noble that have been trying aggressively to increase their content -- not content, but their offerings to include games and other things, and also just be more selective about what they choose and what they stock to make it so. but i've got to take him in this industry has always had its share of herald campaigns come if you know what i mean. [laughter] having been studying the industry for seven years i've outlasted some reporters have asked me where gc the print book in five years. so i think that the future of the bookstore is up to the bookstore. and the future of the print book is up to the consumer.

in the back. >> so far the e-books i've read have simply been translation from the print. but d.c. publishers beginning to add more flexibility, more content, more ability such as the ability to look up factual materials? >> yeah, there's actually a few presentations about enhanced e-books and a lot of publishers are willing to talk about e-books that have a little bit of extra content whether it's in form of video or the kind of things. the issue that some of them are running into has to do with scalability because some of the solutions, yeah, they are very costly, some of them, to implement. and i think it's a huge mistake for a publisher or an author to edit content for a device. you got together content in the end that makes sense for the person who will be using it

regardless of whether they're reading on a paper book or on something like an ipad. because like i was saying before, i see the appeal of those kinds of functions for things like cookbooks. i can't say how may times my wife and i couldn't engage and one of us asked the other is supposed to look like that? it would be nice to click on something that shows of the what it should look like. so that's one little thing where it would possibly make sense, but i don't know if you are reading something from dan brown and a clickable thing to find what's the newest land rover. i just don't know if it's going to reach that page, and also more important consumers are going to take that. any other questions? yeah. >> i believe it was 60% of people buying paper books, paperback, did you have information about, of that, what

number -- [inaudible] >> it's kind of interesting because, you know, most of them are exclusively by print books. we also have information about different format combinations, like paperback plus hardcover plus audio. but what we find it very interesting, at least not is that there is very, very, very few consumers out there that are completely monogamous to one format. and that includes digital here. the other thing we found that is interesting when we're looking at both channels is that we have a report called trends and trade book retailing. we study bookstores, book clubs, the internet channel, and the big ubiquitous of the widgets are wal-mart, target, costco.

when we look at all of them individually we found that if a consumer exclusively buys from the web, they are not as active a consume as someone who buys from the web and a bookstore. and it also works the other way. a person who shops only a bookstore is not as effective as somebody who shops at both. so it really kind of just speaks to the need for a very diverse and active retail ecosystem because i just don't see how -- i just don't see a future of 100% e-books because we'll always have print. does that answer your question? >> yes. >> do you have any idea, for all the -- what percentage are from indie publishers? >> we have that but it's a bit

complicated pie chart because, frankly, there are just so many small publishers and small books that show up on the bestseller books of barnes & noble, amazon. we don't record him again for the rest of the year. but we do have that information. a lot of it are coming from the big six publishers because they have been in the digital game the longest. >> have a set like how that breaks down? >> i wouldn't want to say a number only to find that it is wrong. what i do know that a good chunk of it is the big six. yeah. [inaudible] >> no, actually our information was limited right now to north america but we do want to eventually get stuff worldwide, and also export different kinds of markets like that. so, sorry. yeah. >> in terms of the prospect for indie commerce in terms of print

book, e-book issue? >> it's a start. i've had a couple of issues signing until -- signing onto a bookstore site. i just found the experience of signing on to be a little bit funky and confusion -- confusing but there's other stores have figured out ways to make a little less arduous. but it's definitely a start, and like i was saying, or like i started to say rather is about i don't think this industry has much of a future at all with a small number of retailers are the toll collectors between the consumer and content. i just don't see that as lending its way between a healthy atmosphere. so whether it's a qr code printed on the covers a person browsing can without a phone and buy it or a solution of that nature, there are things that haven't been tried yet, but in terms of, you know, entrance of

the start, it's definitely worth exploring. >> i'm what if you had any idea about how often people actually read the books they are buying or is it just a thing of the moment? >> that's a good question, because we actually were looking at data from the ip bf last year. of some astronomers noticed that didn't seem to get much mention in that aikido is the second quarter, we've all seen the chart that shows everything is like going up and up and that. but there was something interesting about last year, is that the first quarter was up like this, in the second quarter was down like that, and in the third quarter, fourth quarter as if nothing had ever happened. i think as long as people are buying these e-readers as guess we'll see the same pattern again issued because i truly believe

in something called the overloaded nightstand effect. i actually have -- i can't buy him a books and i finished reading the ones that i already have. and i think that what i seen with the numbers and also some of the other things is that consumers do by a lot and then eventually consumer bandwidth becomes the boss and they start reading the things that they already have. but like i said we've only been tracking this for about three years. so for some people that are on their third or fourth e-reader, you know, it's something that will have to watch further to see if they actually -- is the use goes down. we will have to see. [inaudible] >> i'm sorry, there's -- [inaudible] >> self-publishing a thing has always been just great in terms of people being able to figure

out ways to bring their books to market. obviously, there are some books are released there probably never should have been released, or they're only see by the media town and nobody else. i think self-publishing for the publishing industry is a nice thing because it's another way of filtering content because every once in a while we will see a story of a person that became very wealthy publishing their own book, and they eventually got a contract with a large publisher. because countries like amazon and barnes and nobles and others have made a big point of self-publishing platforms, i just think it's going to keep going up. [inaudible] >> i think the only effect that i can see so far is from a pricing standpoint because like i said, a lot of books are very, a lot of the books are very inexpensive. and like i said we've only had a

few years worth of data to look as we don't know how well it's going to influence people going forward. they have 100, 99-cent books on the device but it will never see them again until they're done reading all 100 it's hard to think about. >> on those lines you mentioned very few readers are monogamous. do you have any data about readers going back to the first life? they get a kindle for christmas, they try it. and identically i have a few people walk in the door and say i hate. i try to for a while and i hated. >> there is an because there's some scattered, and, frankly, the actual number of people are using the devices are too small for us to really, truly get into that way because we would love to ask what are your initial impressions of the device of what did you think about this? it was interesting because i bought a kindle last year from ebay. and the description of the device online was, you know,

kindle can be used for parts from everything works before it was sat on. and i asked the guy, after he shipped it to me, i gave him great feedback. but after he shipped this device to me, i sent him a note and said are using another one? he said i bought a kindle to after this and i really enjoy. but i've also heard of people getting carried away with the alleged transformative power of the devices themselves and they're giving it to the kids. and account attention span is, only go so far and some of them might put it down. so it's completely subjective and depends on one's individual relationship to the device. [inaudible] >> sorry? [inaudible] >> i wanted to take it apart and count the microchips, literally, and right and the manufacture and see if i can learn anything

about how many of them have been made, and see, i just wanted to see what the device was, and i thought it is something i could learn, i thought it would be interesting to i took it apart, and i use it as a coaster now. [laughter] >> any other questions? any other questions? >> thank you all so much. please fill out your comment cards and thank you so much for coming. [applause] >> for more information on book expo america visit bookexpoamerica.com. >> part of the book group is 12. it is an imprint that is rather unique in publishing circles it publishes 12 books a year. and a new publisher and editor in chief is kerry goldstein.

first of all, how are you liking your new job? >> love it. i love it. as you know i was with 12 from the very beginning in 2006, so it's wonderful. >> let's talk about some of your upcoming book. last year published a book by christopher hitchens, his autobiography. i see a follow-up is coming up. when is that coming out, and tell us about "arguably: essays by christopher hitchens." >> this is his first collection since 2004. we will publish this in september and it's basically -- it's from 2002, the run up to the invasion in iraq. all the criticism, general commentary, profiles, annoyances, rants and other amusements, international affairs, a section where calling offshore accounts.

it's fantastic and it is a real sense of the scope of christopher's purview as a social commentator. >> and right next to that is "republic, lost." >> he was at stanford, probably best known as an authority on intellectual copyrights as far as it concerns the way. he is not hardware is also the school of ethics. this particular book is about money's influence on legislation. probably more than any other time in history americans have a sense that money controls congress. and that our system is being corrupted. he diagnoses of the illness that is the corruption of our system, not any particular individuals but the general system and put forward a series of radical segments to this problem. including a new constitutional convention and a presence in. that's coming out in october.

>> that's quite a cover and. >> thank you. i'm glad you like it. this is a focus group force. you are the premier authority. >> cary goldstein, eminent outlaws. >> this book is a group biography of the gay writers who changed america. and what's fascinating about is the first half of this book covers writers like capote, james baldwin, some british writers. and what's amazing to me about this book is that those riders are no longer thought about gay writers, but they are writers. and ironically the second half of the book which goes from stonewall and larry kramer, edmund white and others, what you find is sort of more gay literature and become somehow more insular and reaches actually that audience.

but it gives a very broad raised active -- perspective on gay history. how it affected our political culture as well. >> i want to also ask about eric weiner's namesake scott spent we publish his first book i believe it was late 2008, 2009 called the geography of lit. "new york times" bestseller. in that book eric went around the world looking for the happiest places on earth. in this book, eric begins with an ailment which later turned out to be indigestion caused by unreasonable deadline put on them by an editor. it occurs and when the doctor asked him if he has found a faith that he hasn't. so eric sets off on another journey this time to find a religion that works for him best. and he covers some religions we know well, others we don't. he goes all the way to nepal in

search of food and finds an american named wayne. he finds himself in vegas with her while group who worship the little green men. it's a very serious study about the role of faith in our lives but also has eric's wit and sort of objective i. >> and finally, cary goldstein of 12, "time for outrage" up here on the wall. >> this is really excited about. this book by stephane helsel is a phenomenon in europe. it was originally published as a 4000 word pamphlet in october. it has since sold almost 2 million copies. we are calling it for outrage by a 94 euros former french resistant hero who fought with de gaulle named stephane helsel. is also a concentration -- he's also a concentration camp survivor. he is calling for action against a more evasive income and that would be the tyranny and the

dictatorship of the world financial markets. the distribution of wealth, western. is encouraging young people all over the world to get involved and without their involvement, just as he and his colleagues made a difference in the second war, without their involvement that they can change. as i mentioned before, there's a general consensus that we don't have the power to make things happen. and he is living proof that we do. >> cary goldstein, how far in advance doing 12 books a year, so how far in advance do you have these books planned? >> right now i'm fully scheduled through august 2012. out about three books in the fall 2012 season that are likely. we always leave a because big projects. and as you know we're very selective. so we have some peculiar demands, and books that fit everyone some less because of

our on expectations at one book a month may not be right for us. we tried to allow room or that surprise book that comes in that everybody is passionate about and that we can make work in a really big way with a kind of focus that need a more others cannot. >> cary goldstein a publisher, editor in chief of 12 books, twelvebooks.com is the website. >> what are you reading this summer, booktv wants to know. >> well, reading a book about "the coldest winter." and quite frankly, i've held onto this book not wanting to open up the pages to it. it goes over the korean war. and for most people familiar with the korean war, said you don't want to know. and what do they mean by that?

well, i was in korea with the chinese, actually surrounded the entire eighth army, and it was a nightmare. and fortunately this is over 60 years ago, to the best of my knowledge, i haven't suffered psychologically about that war. it pains me when i think of the number of americans that died in korea, and even becomes more difficult when people ask me to explain my reactions in a country i had no idea where i was or why i was there. so common i thought it would be better if not to expose myself to anymore of this nightmare. and i left it alone. i have about six different copies of this one book by david

halberstam. some, but all of them say that their worst thoughts about what happened was actually proven by this book. as to why we got involved, did we know what we were doing, was it successful? so, i feel secure about, to take a look at what happened over 60 years old, and see where this actually takes me. i know one thing. that in june of 1950, i was 20 years old. i was in the second infantry division and i was told that

we're going to stop the communist invasion of south korea. i don't know what i said this publicly, but i had no clear where the hell korea was are what the invasion they were talking about. and even when i came back home, where the most tragic things was -- [inaudible] and two, i couldn't explain where the hell i was. now, i can see that out of the ashes of the broken down community that had been crushed to the ground, that out of all of this, it was one of the greatest democracies and economic powers of that region. and a longtime friend of the united states. those are the good thoughts, but i can say i was in paris in 1950