Borders probably can't be saved. But what about Barnes and Noble? Over at GigaOm, Michael Wolf argues that they're going to need a radically different model if they're to survive: "In the collapsing world of books, it’s every man for himself, and its time for B&N to accelerate its push into becoming a digital publisher."
Right. So we're pathologically lazy, and didn't really want to take the time to research the current size of the e-book market - not that anyone likes to disclosure their sales figures, anyway. A year-old Forrester research study will have to do. A quick and dirty look at their projections suggest around 5 million consumers. Fine.
Let's put that in perspective. How big is the book trade? Again, we turn to 2009 numbers of questionable veracity: 23.9 billion. E-books pulled in a respectable $313 million.
Hang on a tick. Just north of $300 million? Even if we postulated that the e-book market increased ten-fold in the intervening two years, they'd still comprise somewhere north of 10% of total sales1. That's big, but it's not THAT big.
It's also assuming a zero-sum situation - at least one of the studies we read suggested that owning an e-reader increased the number of books read, but didn't decrease paperback sales.
Curiouser and curiouser. We're no trained retailer, but it's possible a market the size of the e-book could destroy a company. It just seems unlikely. While we usually promise not to source the Wall Street Journal, we'll make the exception and direct you here. Their take, at least, is that problems facing Borders are a bit more traditional - $1.29 billion in liabilities and intense competition from online retailers. One assumes the recession didn't help.
Anyway. All of this is to say two things: There is no collapsing world of books. When a book moves to an e-reader, it doesn't disappear. It moves onto a new medium. That's a good thing!
And while book sales might be down, so are sales in everything else. Toyota had to be rescued by the Japanese government back in 2008. That doesn't mean we face the collapsing world of the car.
Border's bankruptcy wasn't driven by the e-book, although it probably didn't help. It was driven by a crap economy and a lot of debt, plus stiff competition from a very efficient online retailer. Eventually the e-reader will own the market - just not quite yet.
1Yes, this is an unedifying miscarriage of basic mathematics. We do not bother to dwell upon the expected market size or the commiserate decline in paper book sales. Forgive us.
