This issue (and next,) undercurrents turns its attention to the changing book business.

Remember paper? We used to read things on it. Not like what you’re doing right now, on your computer, or phone or tablet or whatever you’re using.

In case you haven’t noticed, print’s pretty much over. E-books are outselling hardcovers on Amazon. Apple started its iBooks business to feed literature into the millions of iPads it’s selling. Google’s about to muscle into the game with its soon-to-launch Google Editions. Amazon versus Google versus Apple: It’s like one of those old Godzilla versus Megalon movies.

These monsters of the web are battling because they understand that the e-book market is big and is going to get bigger. There’s a lot of money to be made, and they want it.

Most writers I know still consider e-books an interesting sidelight, not a big deal. You hear a lot of “I’m just not into e-books,” and “I just love real books,” and “I can’t stand reading on my computer.” Or maybe writers don’t care because as of a few weeks ago e-books only constituted somewhere around 5-10 percent of the book market (although it could be half that, or twice — good numbers are hard to come by).

They don’t yet see that the old publishing world is crumbling about them. As a long-time author with a vested interest in the print paradigm, I have been watching this trend with dread fascination, and I can tell you this:  The e-book revolution is real, it’s here, and it is going to change everything, from what is written to which companies publish it to how agents work to who’s going to be able to make a living in literature.

The bottom line is stark:  Paper and ink books are on the way out. Printed books will still exist — like vinyl records still exist, in vanishingly small numbers, bought by collectors. Too many trends are working against print.  First there’s market economics: E-books are cheaper to produce, ship and buy.  Then there’s reader convenience:  E-books offer immediate delivery, lower price, and bells and whistles like the ability to enlarge text.  Finally, there’s the electronic infrastructure:  With a growing number of people comfortable reading on little screens, multiple inexpensive and attractive devices are competing in a vibrant the marketplace. 

And the technology just keeps getting better and cheaper. Three years ago, the first Kindle cost $399. Today’s improved version sells for less than half that. Eventually there will be screens you can roll up, put in your pocket and unfurl as you lie on the couch, like the evening paper (but in full color, with video, web access and no ink stains).   I know, I know, what about the innate wonderfulness of printed books? I’ve heard a lot during the past few months about the sweet smell and delightful heft of printed books. I love print books, too. But I am tempering my love with a dose of realism.

Book publishers are beginning to wake up. Publicly, the old “Big Six” trade publishers are assuring everyone that print will be here forever. Privately, they’re scrambling to find ways to adapt. Agents are fighting to get better e-deals for their writers. Big bricks-and-mortar bookstores are dying and, in ten or twenty years, will be dead.  Check profit numbers at Barnes & Noble and Borders for the past few years.  Indie booksellers have already gone through one round of extinctions; now they’re likely to experience another. Think of them like the little neighborhood video stores that used to be everywhere, but have, for the most part, vanished.

That’s for starters. The whole industry is going to change. Basically, the old print-book model, like all printing, works on economies of scale:  The more copies of a book you print, the cheaper each copy is to produce.  (Much of the expense of book printing comes from initially setting up the plates and press; once the presses start rolling, everything gets cheaper.)  Economies of scale are why publishers depend on sales of a few big blockbuster books to cover the losses from all those little books that never sell more than a few thousand copies.

What happens as e-books hit is this:  People buy e-books instead of print books, so fewer print books are sold, so fewer need to be printed, so publishers lose their economies of scale. As print books become more expensive to produce, profit margins — already narrow in this industry — shrink even more. That means smaller advances for most authors. For publishers, it means more betting on a few big books, less taking chances on riskier projects, smaller publishing lists.

As fewer print books are published, fewer people will have reasons to go to bookstores, and as bookstores go under, there will be fewer options for buying print. So sales will fall even more. Couple this with the alarming decline in newspaper book reviews, purse-string tightening at libraries and increasing energy costs (which affect the cost of shipping all those books), and you can see what happens. If you want more details on this particular vision of literary apocalypse, look here.

But it’s not all bad news. In fact, it will be very good news for a lot of people. I’ll tell you why in the next issue.  

TOM HAGER (www.thomashager.net) is the author of six nonfiction books published the old-fashioned way.