Star Trek and the Changing Book Market

What might the publishing and book world of the future look like, as the ease of distributing books continues to increase dramatically (e.g. Amazon, Kobo) and the numbers of books and writers show correspondingly increases  (e.g. KDP, Createspace, Kobo Writing Life)?  The big bookstore paradigm appears to be failing, or at least transforming into a big “lifestyle” store paradigm, one in which the sales of books will become a smaller part of the overall mix.   In Canada, Chapters is moving in that direction, as is Barnes and Noble in the U.S. 

Well, when one is pondering the future, it never hurts to look at Star Trek.  As we all know, Star Trek has been around for a long time, in all sorts of formats – network TV, cable TV, movies, animation and  books.  The TV show spans most of television history: 

·         the era of a few hyper-dominant networks (the late 1960’s of the original series),

·         to the growing importance of cable (late 1980’s and early 1990’s the Next Generation),

·         to the era of multiple cable and pay TV channels (the mid to late 1990’s of Deep Space Nine and Voyager)

·         and finally to the beginning of the fragmented TV/Cable/PayTV/Internet Streaming media world of today (the early and mid-2000s of Enterprise).

 

So, what’s this got to do with books?  Simply that book production and distribution has gone through, and is continuing to go through a similar transformation:
 

·         the era of many independents and smaller shopping center chain bookstores (before the mid-90’s)

·         the era of a few hyper-dominant bookstore chains - Chapters in Canada, Barnes and Nobles and Borders in the U.S., Waterstones in the U.K. (roughly the mid-90’s to late-00’s).

·         the early introduction of the e-reader and some limited ebook distribution (late 90’s and early 00’s)

·         Amazon’s entry into the paper book market, via internet shopping and home delivery. (early 00s).

·         the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and Kindle Direct Publishing  (late 00’s to present).

·         the growth of the tablet market, such as the iPad, as an alternative e-reader (late 00’s to present).

·         the continued growth and expansion of self and small ebook (and print on demand)  publishing, for example through Kobo, Smashword and Nook publishing as well as Kindle (post 2010 to present).

As will be shown in the data below, the TV fortunes of Star Trek were very much affected by the changes in the vectors of distribution of television.  The table shows the year the series was broadcast, the average Nielsen Ratings for the shows that year and the mix of Star Trek shows that year.  As the data shows, there was a long term decline in Nielsen Ratings over that time period.

Year	Avg NR	Show
1967-68	16.50	TOS
1987-88	10.71	TNG
1988-89	9.36	TNG
1989-90	9.99	TNG
1990-91	11.32	TNG
1991-92	10.81	TNG/DS9
1992-93	10.03	TNG/DS9
1993-94	9.42	TNG/DS9
1994-95	6.16	DS9
1995-96	5.39	DS9/VOY
1996-97	4.72	DS9/VOY
1997-98	4.14	DS9/VOY
1998-99	3.83	VOY
1999-00	3.33	VOY
2000-01	3.98	VOY/ENT
2001-02	3.14	VOY/ENT
2002-03	2.63	ENT
2003-04	1.87	ENT

 

 

It could be argued that this is just a reflection of changing tastes, or the diminution of quality in the Star Trek franchise.  That’s always debatable, especially among Star Trek fans, who love a good debate on that subject (I lean towards TOS and DS9 myself). 

But of course, the number of TV stations and consequently the number of programs that were competing for eyeballs also went up in that period.  The table below has fewer data points than the table above, but it gets the point across.  The table shows the year, the average Nielsen rating, the number of networks broadcasting that year, and an estimate of the number of cable stations available that year.

Year	Avg NR	Networks	Cable
1967-68	16.50	3	0
1987-88	10.71	4	10
1997-98	4.14	7	50
2003-04	1.87	10	100

 

Clearly, Star Trek had a lot more competition in 2003-04 than it did in 1967-68, and that shows up in its Nielsen rating.  It wasn’t hard to garner a 16.5 share in 1967-68 (that corresponded to about 10% of the U.S. population watching the show), whereas it became a struggle to attain a 4.0 share by the early part of the 21^st century (that corresponded to about 2.4% of the U.S. population watching the show) .   The graphs show the same result, very clearly, and the associated R2 values show a very good fit to either a logarithmic function or a power law (yeah, I know there are only four points, but still…).

What we can conclude from this, is that even a cultural product with a very strong brand (like Star Trek) will suffer when the choices available to the potential audience increase dramatically.  It makes sense that this will happen in the book market as well, and it probably happening currently.  It’s hard to say how far along we are in the process – it’s been a much faster process for books than it was for TV.  After all, it’s only in the last 3 or 4 years that ebooks and self/small publishing have really taken off.

Another factor to consider, is that writing and publishing books is extremely inexpensive now.  After all, a good book is basically the product of one mind, with some additional expertise for editing, formatting and artwork.  But that’s nothing compared to the costs of producing even a cheap science fiction show, which takes that talents of dozens of experts, as well as access to a mass distribution channel (though the internet may be changing that too).  So, big publishers are almost certainly in a much more precarious position than the TV networks were during this transition.

Anyway, the next few years should be interesting, if Star Trek is our guide.  As Spock would say, “live long and prosper” (but maybe not, if you are a big publishing house executive).