Publishers, booksellers and the future of books: A new balance between the richness of the editorial proposal and sustainability

Abstract

The publisher chooses the books to be published, the bookseller chooses the books in his store. The book supply chain lies between these two decision-making processes. What passes between the publisher’s decision-making process and the bookseller’s decision-making process, considering the complex system of subjects with different interests, allows us to appreciate the potential plot of value, skills and opportunities.
The first piece of perspective thinking is to consider the start point and the end point of the two processes, that of the publisher and that of the bookseller, as having the same high value. Publishing houses and bookshops are companies with a cultural, informative and sometimes playful ambition, but basically they are businesses.
The book is a complex product – for content, formats, materials – managed by a plurality of actors – publishers, promotional networks, distributors – everyone claiming its gain.
The mechanism that has strengthened over the years is to produce more and more books (and this is an indisputable richness) and to place more and more copies in the market, even forcing the bookseller to receive more products than he can sell, based on the right of unconditional returns, generating a spiral sustainable only in a constantly expanding market. In the current context of rising costs, which also affects the book industry, it becomes even more essential to analyse all the steps leading to the dispersion of already scarce resources, also considering the remarkable changes over the last, fluctuating three years, to understand where the balance lies between the space to be given to the richness of editorial production and the effective space not only in the bookshops but also in the reception of the books by the readers.