New probably misleading similitude about the book industry

Amazon recently wrote that e-books are like paperbacks. Now Peter Hildick-Smith, president of Codex Group, says that physical bookstores are like movie theaters.

Based on Codex survey data, Amazon has more than tripled its book unit share, from 13% in 2008 to 40% in 2014, which has contributed to an estimated 30% loss of physical bookstore selling space over the same period. With that loss of bookselling space has come a 4% decline in U.S. households reading fiction from 2008 to 2012, according to research by the National Endowment for the Arts. 

In Hildick-Smith’s view, just as Hollywood movie studios would be reduced to mere video producers without movie theaters to launch their latest blockbusters, trade publishers without physical bookstores to accelerate new book discovery would be robbed of their unique ability to make break-out bestsellers and author brands, and ultimately be reduced to the role of Amazon associates, reliant on daily deals to promote new titles. 

Whether openly acknowledged or not, the book market is “now in a battle for both the survival of physical-world book selling and the trade publishing business model that depends on it,” Hildick-Smith said. “The choice is either to emulate the film industry, with its theaters and strong multiple channels of distribution, or else by default, go the way of the music industry, which has endured a massive revenue decline since it became dominated by digital distribution.”

This similitude does not sound right to me. Movie theaters add to your experience, because you watch the movie on a screen that is a much larger than your typical tv set. And you make your kids/significant other happy when you bring them to the movies, or you enjoy the company of other people. Bookstores add nothing to the experience of reading a book, which is exactly the same whether you bought it in a bookstore, on the internet, or is landed in front of your house by drones.

Moreover, movies are first distributed through theathers and then through other channels. Books are distributed through physical and online bookstores at the same time. There is a sequential model in the book industry as well, but as we know it is based on different book formats, first the hardback, then the paperback. By the way, one should asks Amazon how come that hardbacks are still the format that publishers prefer for the new titles, if paperbacks were so beneficial to the industry.

Probably books are more like music, which is substantially the same in all formats and across all the distribution channels, even though books are less exposed to piracy than music is (with some exceptions).