/lit/ - Literature

>>18641511
>I feel like I only want to sell physical books and completely ignore the kindle market. I don't even want my books on Amazon.
Not possible. Someone will just scan and upload it the moment it becomes successful. More likely, it will never become successful because most people prefer to read a book online before they buy it.

My personal philosophy is to simply accept the wu wei of the present moment, and attempt embrace digitalization rather than fighting against it. I think in the near future, the only reason people will buy books is as a physical luxury product-- either to give as a gift or keep in their personal library. If someone wishes to read a book, they can read it online. If someone wishes to physically own a book, and this is a crucial difference, then they have to buy it.

Whats important here, and this is where I think there will be a real market in the future for bookbinders and the like, is that now people are buying the book to own the physical product as-such. They aren't buying the book simply to be able to read the text inside it, since they can do that online. So what should a publisher do to stay competitive? They should pour their effort into limited run, high quality prints. Make books beautiful again, and sell to a much smaller market of art collectors and rich status signalers. The last few hundred years publishing has revolved around cheap manufacturing with small profit margins, but now there is no manufacturing costs in copying a pdf and there is no profit margin either, so the whole momentum of the last three hundred years in publishing has hit a wall. Creative solutions are required, to say the least.