From: "Sperberg, Roger" <roger.sperberg@...>
Date: 2003-01-31T23:43:17+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Books -- A Question

>>Anyone care to speculate
>>as to what may be the cause and what we could do?
>
>One datapoint: I've been told by someone in the industry that last year 
>sales of technical books were down by ~35% from the year before and the 
>year before (2001) they were down ~15% from the year before that.
>
>I think the recession has to by playing a part- though that's not the 
>whole reason.
>

It's not just technical books. Publishers in general are in a long decline:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051
-013003B

This article is about the problems the (paper) book industry is
currently facing, including a discussion of ebooks.

The first paragraph reads:

"Retail book publishers are in trouble. A decade ago, they could
expect a healthy 10% profit margin selling books in bookstores. Now
publishers' profits are less than half that, averaging around 4%.
Their bookstore sales have also dropped in each of the past five
years."


Roger Sperberg