The extinction of the publishing industry

What once was a booming industry is now plummeting down the same path as the dinosaur. The issue of having to compete was the internet is what the publishing industry is facing today. Small publishers are no longer able to compete effectively and profitably. The biggest threat for advertising dollars comes from online sites. We are spending more time using the internet and advertisers have found a way to reach us more effectively.

For example notice when we log onto our Facebook accounts on the right side of the screen we are shown ads for all kinds of services and products. Advertisers now actually pull information based on what we click that we like and will use are data to pull the ads they think we would be interested in. This way they have our attention and they can try to persuade us into buying their product. Advertising is also done through supporting search engines. The published paper can only hold so much information but the internet pulls up exactly what we want in the click of a button. Instantly we updated on the latest news and entertainment, but we can also publish our own. Between 1999 and 2004 the time spent on the Internet escalated by 24 per cent and online advertising rose by 22 per cent, where as the traditional media spending declined. 

Publishers are not longer interested in the quality of writing anymore. What publishers want now is sale volume. Therefore authors now have to use services like Lulu or CafePress so that they can sell their books. Most only make about .75 cents a book. It is easier now to do so this way because they don't have to deal with an agent they are self publishing their books. Publishing has significantly changed and what we read the quality we once had is being taking away, because of the fact that we must compete now for the dollars instead of focusing on talent. One example that caught my attention was the story of a young author who changed the names and titles of a Jane Austen book. The author submitted the book to 18 publishers and out of those only one caught the plagiarism and the rest flat out rejected the book!!

 The sad reality is with the way times are changing there will no longer be printed paper. We won't buy the paper anymore and the future generation will be asking question like" What is a newspaper?” People in the future most only know of the search engine way to update themselves on the latest news.