Alexandra Alter's articles and interventions on the world of books and its industry are among the most read, discussed and meditated on among insiders and the public who love to read and get information on trends, not only literary, but also economic, of this media sector which is the second in terms of business after television.
It is the journalist of the "New York Times" who brought to the attention of the general public trends such as the emergence of the hybrid reader, who reads everywhere according to the circumstances, the growing importance of audio in the media diet of readers, with the 'impressive development of audiobooks and podcasts, the phenomenon of self-published correctly told and finally the very first manifestations of a digital narrative that with ebooks and apps is experimenting with a first and still immature remediation of classic narrative forms.
Alter uses new media extensively in her work and also in her free time and therefore she can talk about it, unlike many others, with good reason and not as reported experience. In general, her interventions are very punctual and also developed with balance of judgment, a talent the latter is not easy to find either among the high tech shotgunners or among the technoskeptics.
Abby Goodnough, the health care reporter of the "New York Times" spoke in these terms of Alexandra "Here are some of the things I like best about Alexandra: her laughing curiosity, her funny sense of humor, her imperturbable calm. Alexandra is super-intelligent, deeply thoughtful with some great reading."
Born in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, Alexandra Alter grew up in Dhahran, a very important center for the oil industry in the Arabian Peninsula. In 2003, she received a BA in Journalism and Religion from Columbia University's School of Journalism in New York. After graduating she collaborated with "Esquire" as a reader and critic of fiction. As a professional reporter she started out at the Miami Herald covering local and national events in the world of religions. In 2009 the "Wall Street Journal" called her to cover the book industry. She remained at the business newspaper until 2014 when the NYT signed her in the same position.
In late 2015, Alter gave a lengthy interview on the podcast "The Kindle Chronicles" about the state of the book industry. In this interview there are many interesting ideas to understand what is happening in this media sector. We have transcribed, translated, revised and adapted for an Italian-speaking audience this text full of useful reflections especially for those who work in the sector in countries where the change brought about by new media has not yet fully developed as in the United States. Looking at this immense country, which is unquestionably the great laboratory of the media industry, one can see, as in a projection, what could happen even in countries more resilient to change, but not immune to it, such as Italy.
Happy reading.
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What beautiful books!
Question (D) — What were the stages of your career in journalism?
Alexandra Alter (AA) — I started out at the Miami Herald, where I worked on religion for three years after journalism school. It was interesting, a great way to cover a wide variety of topics. When we talk about religion we also take into consideration culture, politics, science and many other things. There I had fantastic journalism experience in various fields before moving to the Wall Street Journal, where I did literature and culture, occasionally something else, then I switched to books and continued for almost five years before enter the NYT. When I arrived at the Times I had at least 10 years of journalistic experience at an excellent level of preparation, in one of the most interesting areas of culture, the book.
Q — How the NYT managed to steal you away from the “Wall Street Journal”, another great newspaper in the American tradition. Maybe you weren't comfortable with the News Corp newspaper?
AA — The WSJ is a fantastic newspaper and I had a wonderful time there. What attracted me to the NYT was the particular interest in books. They invest a lot in the publishing section, it's a topic they give great prominence to. Already at the WSJ I dealt more with art and culture than with finance or economics, but at the NYT I had the opportunity to address these topics in a broader way.
Q — I love listening to your conversations with Pamela Paul on the Book Review Podcast. Did you like this aspect of working at the NYT?
AA — Yes, it was very nice, I like your interviews with the authors. It's a good opportunity to talk about topics I don't usually cover, I find it very interesting and I enjoy talking to her.
Q —I heard that with you you made a distinction between the world of books and literature, you deal with authors and their books, but also with the publishing industry, right?
AA — Yes, I deal with various subjects, I cover the culture section, the profiles of authors, I analyze literary trends, but more than anything else I deal with publishing in general, the changes that are taking place, the situation of bookshops, etc.
Ebook/book, a war of religion?
Q — Your September 2015 article The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead sparked a ruckus and was picked up and discussed around the world. The timing was exceptional and even the things you wrote seemed to bring up a feeling or minute perception in the public who read and discuss books. It's interesting to see if your education and experience in religion might have helped you, because there seems to be something religious about the war of words between ebook lovers and those who prefer print. Do you also think that the competition between ebooks and books can vaguely recall the dynamics of a war of religion, such as the recent one between Apple and Windows?
AA — I firmly believe it, many people are for or against. Personally, I read a lot on the Kindle, but I also read a lot of paper books. I use whatever happens depending on where I am. I also read on my iPhone with the Kindle app and listen to audiooboks when I commute from home to work or business. So I'm pretty agnostic about it. The point is an other. In 2015 there was a coup de théâtre worthy of the commedia dell'arte. It was thought that traditional publishing would be in very serious trouble, that it would be destroyed; some said that ebook sales would account for half of total book sales, others predicted that bookstores would close en masse, as music stores had. But that didn't happen and it felt strange that it didn't. So book lovers, like a cracked boxer about to throw in the towel, raised their heads and let go of a deadly uppercut that made the competitor wobble above all for the surprise of seeing such vitality in a dying man. But no one was knocked out. At the same time it is undeniable that the ebook market is a thriving and expanding market and there is an incredible independent market that continues to grow more and more. I've had very positive responses from independent bookshop managers, who have been happy to be able to challenge the conventional system of chains and large-scale distribution. Amazon is doing very well and also all the ebooks belonging to the Seattle giant and self-published ones are not affected at all by the decline that ebooks published by major publishing companies are experiencing. In short, what is happening is encouraging and what is happening is good for the entire ecosystem of the book. There was a jolt and something moved.
Happy growth or decline of ebooks?
Q — Regarding Amazon's growth and ebooks which, on the other hand, are declining, there is something wrong with this scheme and which, to say the least, leaves us perplexed. If Amazon accounts for 67% of ebook sales, and if Amazon says that Kindle Store sales in 2015 increased as a unit and in revenue, well, that shouldn't indicate that total ebook sales are probably still increasing, rather what falling?
AA — It certainly could be, but traditional publishers say ebook sales are declining, authors say their ebook sales are declining and hardcopy sales are increasing, and independent bookstores are selling more books. Then there are data from Nielsen and the Association of American Publishers (AAP). Since Amazon doesn't release sales information outside of what it's mandated to do by the SEC, it's hard to say anything certain on this front.
Q - If I can venture an interpretation I would say this. The market has split into two large areas that were previously united and which have now separated and are drifting to the point of becoming two independent and separate markets. The first is that of traditional publishers, bookshops, conventional authors and their agents chasing the highest advance. In this area the book resists and the ebook retreats according to all the data we have. The best deals continue to be made here and the ebook is always ancillary to the book. The ebook is seen as simply a different way of distributing the same content on a new distribution channel, the network that merely adds to the other retailers. In this context, the ebook does not add or take anything away from the book, it is the book in another format. Everyone is happy with this state of affairs and no one wants to change it, indeed everyone wants to garrison it and defend it as Fort Alamo was defended. In the second very young digital market, born as an appendix to the first and which revolves around Amazon and which is now starting to detach itself from the first and most important after being thrown away, ebook sales are doing very well and a new publishing system is being born which sees the publisher in a minor role and the authors, online platforms and social networks in a function of absolute prominence. For this separative phenomenon (which looks a bit like the theory of the drift of containers) there seems to be something wrong in saying that ebooks are declining. No ebooks are growing, we just don't see it. We are actually witnessing an evolutionary process in which book and ebook are separating as a market and as an audience. Something that has already happened in the history of the media with theater and cinema, radio and television and so on.
AA — It's an interesting hypothesis on which I have to reflect even if I don't see this fracture in such a drastic way.
Q — You've probably already seen the data compiled by Hugh Howey of Author Earnings and exposed in a recent post. According to his estimates, the share of ebook sales on the Kindle Store of the big five has dropped from 45% in February 2015 to less than 27% in February 2016. Probably 80% of the sales of these 1200 AAP publishers are big five. Are you aware that the AAP's ebook market share is shrinking so rapidly?
AA — It could really be like this. Hugh Howey is truly an expert in this field; he was a very successful self-published author. You probably already know his story. He decided to hold on to the ebook rights when he sold the paper rights to Simon & Schuster. A decision that at the time was unprecedented or in any case extremely rare. Howey is truly an authoritative voice on the matter. I think traditional publishers' ebook sales aren't doing very well. There are many causes, one of the most important being the competition in this market segment from self-published authors and independent publishers which eventually erode the AAP's share.
Q — What the publishing professionals you are in contact with say. How do they evaluate this data? What's really going on?
AA — You know, I think a lot of these big publishers mostly look at their sales rates of eBooks, hardcovers and also audiobooks which is a growing category: audiobooks are growing like ebooks were growing 5 or 10 years ago. I believe that publishers rely above all on their sales to understand the market trend and probably also look at the performance of their partners, of retail distribution to understand what sells the most. I'm not aware that publishers rely so heavily on data from the AAP or other sources in making their decisions.
High prices. Market dynamics or induced phenomenon?
Q — Why do the big publishing houses continue to raise the prices of ebooks so much now that they can finally do it on the basis of the new agreements with Amazon?
AA — It is a very interesting question. With Amazon's $9.99 ebook gimmick, people have gotten used to paying less for books and the fact that they can buy them so easily devalues them in the eyes of consumers. Publishers have always viewed this trend with great concern, to the point of asking Apple to enter the market as a counterweight to Amazon. Then what happened with the sentences contrary to this agreement happened. Now that publishers have managed to maintain price control in their new contracts with Amazon, they have the opportunity to price an ebook comparable to that of a hardcover, because perhaps they are not interested in introducing people to digital reading. However, prices remain highly variable and publishers also have their reasons for setting certain prices. There is no doubt, however, that this commercial policy of the publishers has had an impact on the decline in ebook sales.
Q — Yes, all of this has led many consumers to buy fewer ebooks. I mean, when a customer sees an ebook for $14,95, they want to get the hardcover edition that's only a few dollars more. If the economy paperback edition is also available, then there is no doubt about the choice. Think, that in this time when prices are going up and ebook profits are going down, the big five will start putting two and two together and realize that maybe Jeff Bezos was right with his $9.99. Or maybe, more maliciously, he doesn't mind at all that the ebook sector is retreating?
AA — The matter is rather complex and many factors are at play whose specific weight has yet to be evaluated. These are also new phenomena with respect to the classic dynamics of the market. We must bear in mind that a characteristic of ebook prices is their dynamism, they change from day to day and even on the same day. Readers need to understand this and get used to this state of affairs.
Q — You were one of the first observers to understand how the phenomenon of self-publishing has made an important contribution to the growth and diffusion of ebooks and has also accustomed many readers to reading on a medium other than paper. An experience that should have left a mark but instead… What I don't fully understand is this reasoning “I want to read this ebook, but since it costs 14 dollars, I'll buy the paperback edition”. How does a digital player go back five years; in the sense that by giving up reading on a digital device, you give up a lot of services. On your Kindle or iPad, you can instantly look up words in the dictionary, translate them into another language, select the best font for a 200-year-old's eyesight, highlight, comment, share a passage, and so on. And it can be read even in precarious light conditions. Paradoxically, on the Kindle you can have the text read aloud by a kind of Frankenstein's great-grandson who, with a robotic voice, and ignoring punctuation, spills XNUMX words a minute into our ears. As a last resort to read can also be fine this extreme experience. Without considering that an ebook can always be carried around without feeling its weight, that it does not take up any space in a bag, on a table or on a shelf. They are all things of great practicality and also of value that a regular digital reader cannot give up lightly. Aren't these services worth the few dollars more than a paperback, constipated, with cheap paper, with narrow margins and with a font at the limit of legibility? Want to match the readability of an ebook with that of a budget book? Here, the idea that many go back to paper after trying digital is incomprehensible to me. Even the phenomenon that you discovered and described with the term hybrid reader (ie the reader who alternates between ebook and book depending on the circumstances) is not easily conceivable from my point of view. Why separate your library between digital and paper, if you download an ebook in a second after someone has told you about it, why go to the bookstore or order the book on Amazon which arrives the next day and if nobody is at home the courier has to come back another time. Why choose a product with such a higher environmental impact?
AA — I understand perfectly what you are saying. It is clear that if you are an avid digital reader this is your ideal form of reading, because you can carry the books around with you, adapt the fonts and have them read aloud. Clearly the benefits are many. I've heard many people say “I have a Kindle, I got it for Christmas a few years ago, I used it for a while and then I got bored”. Others, on the other hand, immediately fell in love with it, and wouldn't trade it for anything. However, if a person looks more at the price than at the technology, if he's not someone who reads ebooks because he prefers them above all else, because he finds it more comfortable, in short, if he's a hybrid reader, maybe he buys the paperback because it costs five or six dollars less. I say if one just wants to read, he can certainly exchange books and ebooks and if the former is more convenient, he takes that one.
E-reader or something else?
Q — Another thing that has happened is that e-readers have lost ground because people have started reading on large format smartphones. In fact, the decline in e-reader reading is greater than the decline in the entire ebook sector. This is a clear indicator that people are using different devices to read eBooks, right?
AA — Sure, I totally agree, I think people are migrating to smartphones and tablets, but one thing I've learned from the Codex Group, who did a study on just that, is that if you read on your smartphone or tablet – if you think about it for a moment it is actually like this – you spend much less time reading than you would with a dedicated reader, because you check your emails, twitter, the news or do anything else on the internet because those devices allow you to do it. So it turned out that with the e-reader people were reading about 3 or 4 hours a week, while with the other devices about half an hour and obviously the sales go down, since it takes much longer to finish a book .
D — This is a pity because the e-erader somewhat preserved the sacredness of the act of reading as a solitary and all-encompassing act, conditions that are objectively lost on any device connected to the Internet. I'm sorry the Kindle is starting to disappear.
AA - I'm sorry too. I love my Kindle too and if they stopped making dedicated e-readers it would be a great loss for me. I find it very comfortable and an intelligent evolution of the way of reading books. I still read in paper, but I agree with you, for me it would be a pain if ereaders disappeared.
About Amazon
D — By dint of buzzing around authors and working in this field, have you by any chance started working on one of your books, are you thinking of writing something of your own?
AA — No, actually it's an interest. I love to read, so it could happen, but there's nothing cooking right now.
Q — Do you foresee a long future at the NYT in the editorial field, or would you be open to being assigned to other sections such as foreign or other?
AA — I'd like to continue doing it for another few years, given that the sector is going through a phase of great changes and then because I like reading for work; but I don't exclude it, I also like to be interested in different things and change from time to time.
Q — Going back to the war between paper and digital books, I like the idea of being agnostic in dealing with these topics. I'm guessing your information about publishing, a field you've been in for more than six years, comes mostly from New York companies. Was it more difficult to find sources and ways of knowing what is happening at Amazon, across the country and in another "religious faction"?
AA — Yes it was difficult, but it's not a task for me. We have a dedicated Amazon reporter, David Straitfeld, who is doing a great job covering the company. I myself have had some very useful contacts and of course, as you know, Amazon has a dedicated editorial operations team, so I try to keep up with them and find out about lead authors. I have good contacts, but I don't handle them to the same level as David Straitfeld does.
Q — There seems to have been a growth in the editions published by Amazon as a publishing house, as can also be seen from Howey's data. Do you also think that Amazon is growing thanks to all the titles it publishes?
AA - Yes, certainly. I believe they publish more books and translations than any other publisher, which is remarkable. They have always cultivated all kinds of genres and it seems like they always keep adding new titles and new genres.
Q — How do you see the possibility that Amazon could open a chain of 300/400 bookstores throughout the United States.
AA — This is an impressive number of stores, considering that Barnes & Nobles, which is an established chain, has 640. This also explains why B&N's stock lost ten points after this Amazon announcement. Amazon has always surprised us with its radical experiments and I believe that bookstores belong to this category. If Steve Kessel, who is very close to Jeff Bezos, after a long sabbatical that began in 2012 is back in operation to follow this project, it means that Amazon is doing it very seriously and trying to build something that will last.
Q — Many commentators have derided this decision as a return to the past and a certain surrender of the flaming digital towards the faded molecular. Is that so?
AA - But no. As we know, Amazon pursues the consumer in the most answered meanders and there are many people who still prefer to go to the bookstore rather than buy on the Internet. The recovery in book sales and the opening of new independent bookstores demonstrates precisely this affection of consumers for books, an affection that will last quite a while yet. And so Amazon goes to meet them on this terrain too. Amazon bookstores will be different from the ones we usually frequent. The Amazon bookstores will be built on the Seattle one, as a materialization of the Kindle Store. The selection, recommendation, exposure criteria that you see on Amazon.com will be those that you will find in Amazon bookstores. This is something quite different from traditional bookstores. Then Amazon's logistical capacity is such that between buying on the Amazon website and buying in an Amazon bookstore there will be no different waiting times. This is an important contribution to the development of the market. As one colleague put it, “bookstores carry the books, Amazon sells them”. Perhaps it will be so
D - Good! Is there anything else you'd like to add about the ebooks or about yourself? What else do you think we should expect in the coming months or what else we should understand about the industry you're in?
AA — In my opinion it is important to continue reading regardless of the format. Thank you for taking an interest in these topics and my work, it was a pleasure talking to you.
