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Literature

Print Under Pressure

October 11, 2016

With their e-books and e-readers, Amazon and Apple have turned the book market upside down. So will conventional books survive? This is the question being asked by booksellers, publishers – and of course the readers.

https://p.dw.com/p/2R6vM
Doku Buch unter Druck (a+r film & ZDF)
Image: a+r film & ZDF

Everything has changed since online booksellers such as Amazon shook up the market, forcing publishers to accept special conditions and encouraging authors to self-publish on the company's online platforms – at the expense of the publishers themselves and, above all, local bookstores.

Filmszene Doku "Buch unter Druck" (a+r film + ZDF)
Self-publishers put out their own books on the Internet without the help of publishing houses.Image: a+r film + ZDF

Will the book survive?

Michael Then, Marketing Manager of Piper Verlag, speaks of the “overturning of a business model that had grown over centuries” between publishers, booksellers and readers. Has this classic business model for books become an anachronism, without future? Especially as texts – be they reference books, novels, essays, etc. – are becoming more and more popular as e-books and in principle making bookshelves as well as booksellers and publishers superfluous. The book in its classical form is a democratic instrument: once it has been published, it can no longer be manipulated and can be as little controlled as its readers by any download platform in the era of the NSA.

Filmszene Doku "Buch unter Druck" (a+r film + ZDF)
Writer Clemens Meyer believes that the book will become increasingly irrelevant in the future.Image: a+r film + ZDF

An insoluable controversy

In his film, documentary maker Siegfried Ressel – himself formerly a bookstore owner – pursues a controversy that is just as exciting as it is currently insoluable. He visits booksellers Carsten Wist in Potsdam and Denis Mollat ​​in Bordeaux, both of whom are inspired by the sale of books and yet are pursuing quite different business models. Ressel also talks to committed publishers who still see their profession as relevant to society, to skeptics who think the entire book market system as a discontinued model, and to authors who have widely differing perceptions of their books.