Nov 12 2010
The Big Publishing Companies Need To Embrace Electronic Books
E-book readers, and the e-books to read on them, are a very recent phenomenon. Even so, they have been accepted very quickly by the book buying public. A lot of the thanks for that has to go to the Amazon Kindle reader – in particular the Kindle 2.0 which hit the market in February of 2009. The third generation Kindle was launched in August of 2010 and, in spite of numerous prophecies of doom for the Kindle following the release of Apple’s iPad, is selling faster than ever. However, it was the Kindle 2.0 that helped e-books to really take off.
Another key factor was the large number of Kindle books on offer. Amazon has always been ahead of the chasing pack in terms of the number of titles on offer. Today they have over 750,000 Kindle books available on their Kindle store – and that’s just the paid titles. They have a further 1.8 million titles which are out of copyright and are now available for download free of charge.
However, although the public seems to have taken to e-books, it’s debatable if the same can be said for many of the major publishing firms. The traditional publishing cycle has been totally modified by the introduction of e-books. It’s not just that e-books are cheaper than printed books (since they consume no paper, ink or bindings) – there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be on sale simultaneously with the hardback edition. No need to wait months for the paperback, the e-book version is available from day one.
Obviously, having a cheaper version available at the same time as the hardback is something which could impact upon the sales of hardback books. Currently Amazon are shipping 180 e-books for every 100 hardbacks that they sell. This seems to have created a bit of a stir for many of the big publishing houses. They have already had some fairly fraught discussions with Amazon regarding e-book pricing.
Publishers like Penguin, Hachette and Harper Collins recently switched to the “agency model” for their e-books. In plain English – the publisher sets the sales price, not the retailer (Amazon). This has generated elevated prices for some e-books – with some of them actually costing more than the printed version.
Kindle owners quickly made their feelings known by awarding “one star” reviews to titles where they felt that the price of the Kindle version had been set too high. Some fairly blunt comments were left on the Amazon website – aimed at the publishers for the most part – and some irate readers went so far as to suggest that potential customers boycott both Kindle and hardback editions until prices are set at more reasonable levels. Some prices have already fallen.
It seems to be an almost suicidal tactic by the publishers to adopt such an artificial method of raising prices. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that e-book readers owners read more than their fair share of books. You wouldn’t buy an e-book reader if you read a book a month, would you? Put it another way, people who own e-book readers are the target demographic for the major publishers.
It also seems obvious that e-books should cost less than printed books. Apart from their lack of paper, ink and bindings, they have no delivery fee to speak of. They are also more environmentally friendly – even when the materials used in the e-book readers themselves are taken into account. It seems probable that e-book reader owners would not only be able to work this out for themselves but would, quite naturally, anticipate that the price would reflect this fact.
The publisher’s tactics may help to keep their profits up in the short term – but they risk alienating some of their best customers in the process. Unjustified price levels seem likely to annoy the buying public and, after a few one star reviews and public calls for buying boycotts, authors would presumably also be somewhat disenchanted. Publishers have every bit as much to gain from the e-book revolution as the public. There are savings to be had by all – publisher’s costs will also be reduced and customers will expect prices to reflect this fact. If publishers can adapt to e-books, in the same way that readers have, they may continue to thrive. On the other hand, if their desire for short term profits inures them to the possible opportunities offered by this new medium, they will be rejected by both their authors and their readers.
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