The German retailer Libri GmbH ("Libri"), also known as Weltbild GmbH & Co. KG, or more commonly Tolino, has filed for insolvency.
Tolino offers - or offered - various e-readers and e-books.
In light of the plethora of information on our Sustainable Publishing page, this news is interesting - could it be related in some small way?
Could we be seeing the beginning of the end of the e-book, or is this just a single company in financial trouble? Could this be the vanguard of an oncoming storm; a microcosm of what's on the horizon?
Are e-books on the decline? Statistics say yes, they are. They have never been the monster they were predicted to be.
E-books reached their zenith in the mid-20-teens and have been in decline since (with the exception of 2020, but I believe this is likely an anomaly due to the Covid-19 pandemic and government inflicted lockdowns). It has since continued its downward journey.
It isn't the only change in the literary/print/publishing landscape. We had seen the phenomena of the Rise of the Indie-author in the mid to late 20-teens (and as anyone who knows me or BKP well can contest, I had been a voice in this movement). But even this phenomena has curtailed.
Not only have we seen the Indie-author plateau out, we have seen the rise of the small to medium press or publisher alongside the shrinking of the Traditional (big 5) publishers.
Why? Possibly similar to the British Invasion of the '80's music scene, we were inundated with a plethora of music. Not all good, not all bad. The '80's became the age of the one-hit-wonders. But it has since settled down. So too with the indie-authors of the mid-20-teens. The tsunami of titles has waned, and we are now entering an phase of much more seasoned and 'cleaning up' to a finer form of literature and publishing, thus seeing the rise of the Small to Medium Press.
But it goes further still. At the end of the 'production line' of writing, print and publishing lies the necessary stage of retail - the actual selling of one's book! And this landscape is in a state of flux.
Now, I can only comment on the state of book-retail in Canada, but with the identity-crisis Indigo (Indigo/Chapters/Coles) is struggling through (I mean, either you're a bookstore or a knick-knack shop, or a coffee shop - pick one), this vacuum is being filled with the independent bookshop; we ARE seeing the return and growth of the smaller book shops.
So, what does all this mean? (Yes, it's a lot of information and, admittedly, the charts and data have been simplified). But what we are looking for are general trends that are rippling across our literary landscapes. Things ARE changing.
The printed medium (books) is IN (and had never really left).
The model of the Big Five (Penguin/Random House, Hachette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, and MacMillian ) fails to work for all but the rare few. The rise of the indie-author has come to an end. Growth in publishers has shifted towards the small and medium presses and publishers.
The return to the local independent bookshop is upon us. The distain of the big-box bookstore has arrived.
Could Tolino be the first domino? Time will tell.
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