First, for some time, the movie industry has targeted its filmmaking power at the young, yet last year, movie attendance declined among every demographic group (including the young) but one:  those over 60, which actually increased.  Second, the publishing industry has long looked to Baby Boomers to lead all segments in book buying, and they have…until last year.  In 2011, book-buying leadership slipped away from those born between 1945 and 1964 to those born between 1979 and 1989, Generation Y.

What an inversion of stereotypes! Book-buying young people and movie-going elders, really?  Looking a little deeper, the younger cohort’s book buying makes sense because they are buying books for school and are purchasing digital books. Yet that younger age group has never taken the book-buying lead in the past.  Also, looking a little deeper into the over-sixty segment of the Boomers, the reality that they have money and time, and, in fact, indulged deeply in movies in their past suggest that they are returning to what once drove their media interests.  They are indulging their movie-going whims just as the younger cohort turns to digital technology to satisfy their move-viewing needs.

These realities have taken both industries by surprise, and as a result, every movie studio has an “older demographic” film in the pipeline, and every publisher is looking for another title to sweep across the youth market.  Marketing messages will adjust accordingly.

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We’ve written about the ways in which producers of other goods are attempting to eliminate the middle man and sell directly to consumers and now some book publishers are following suit.  It appears that the publishers are more afraid of Amazon’s power (60 percent of the e-book market) than they are of piracy.  Can these publishers effectively dent Amazon’s profits, or is it too little, too late?

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