The Elephant in the Library

A Nielsen report shows 39% of iPad users regularly read books on their machines.  Viewed in context this is a great boost for eBooks even though it means 61% don’t…yet.  There could be a number of reasons holding back a large proportion of these consumers from fully realising the potential of the iPad in terms of an eReader.

Many will have no interest in reading this way instead preferring paper or even reverting to e-Ink machines such as the Kindle. Others probably don’t read…period.  The upshot of these stats though is very encouraging considering Apple shifted 7 million units since the launch earlier of the iPad in 2010.  If nearly 40% are purchasing eBooks regularly then the adoption of eBooks as an everyday media format is secure.

Pricing of eBooks will remain a hot topic to many publishers it is the elephant in the library.  Another recent survey showed that 62% of consumers are not prepared to pay for online content, a figure close to the 61% of iPad owners who are not using their machines to read books. I doubt there is correlation or if there is it would be interesting to know what the reason is that is stopping people either paying for online content or downloading eBooks.

Although eBooks have been with us for well over a decade now, the next two to three years are the vital time to ensure electronic books become established in the psyche of readers and general consumers alike.  How many people will wake up on Christmas morning to an iPad or Kindle and begin the experience of digital reading, and of those how many will receive eBooks as gifts and recognise the value of an eBook in the same sense as if it were a paper or hardback volume?

If we get the pricing right and the consumer recognises the value of an eBook, then the elephant in the library may roar its delight rather than create an obstacle we all want to skirt around. 

Why you should have to buy eBooks but what should you really expect to pay?

Many publishers have been asked to quantify why they charge what they charge for eBooks and many are keeping quiet.

There is a misconception that eBooks cost nothing to produce and it could not be further from the truth. There is physical costs in time, effort, production and distribution associated with eBooks. Each eBook has to be totally reset for eBook publication and conversion into different formats, this is a time consuming and expensive process.  And that is before we begin to include other costs such as promotion, advertising and marketing. Even more expensive.

Because we have lived in a world where up until now there has been availability of many free eBooks and many sub-standard eBooks which have had very little cost associated, consumers have been happy to download them for free and this has led to a false expectation that all eBooks should be free or only cost pennies.  The market has grown up considerably in the last six months and consumers have to make the transition too.  Quality products which are well produced and marketed have to have a reasonable cost attached.  The cost per title also includes the cost to the reseller usually between 35 and 60%. Authors have to be paid for their hard work and publishers should also be rewarded for their hard work too. So £4.95 for an eBook which retails at £7.99 for the physical paper version is a good balance.

Some publishers are charging too much for their eBooks and consumers will vote with their wallets and rightly so but an eBook which costs a third to a half less than the paper version is a price which will make the market sustainable and allow strong growth, leading to more choice for consumers.

POD and Pad…Welcome to the future of publishing

There is an interesting and level-headed article in this week’s Bookseller by Tom Tivnan exploring the virtues and adoption of POD.  Something we at Caffeine Nights have been extolling since we began.  It would appear that many major publishing houses are now finally looking at the benefits.  Like all environmental changes for good it won’t be driven by a need to make the world a better place but by finance and the market.  For smaller publishers such as us, POD is actually a more expensive option per title with lower financial returns but we are driven by other motives such as the desire to change the industry.

What is driving this change among the establishment is linked to the arrival of the iPad, the new Kindle and the buzz around eBooks.  Publishers are waking up to the fact that they need to be able to respond and compete. Having thousands of copies of titles sitting in warehouses with no prospect of knowing if a demand will ever be created to sell those titles is not efficient.  We have sais this for years.  The truth is our way of working is harder and requires a more consistent approach with the media, stores and the buying public to ensure we create and sustain demand.  We like hard work and know what is required.  It will be interesting to see who else does.

Carry on up the jungle…

So Amazon are finally opening a UK eBook store and launching 2 new eReaders. They say they will set the price of the eBooks for sale, which is a little typical of its approach in publishing.  It is clear they wish to dominate and fully control the market.  I wonder if they are going to allow UK based publishers who don’t have a US presence or bank account into their exclusive little club or if they are going to continue excluding publishers even to their official UK store.  It will be interesting to watch what they are going to do.  Apparently the new store will have 400,00+ titles on it.  As a UK based publisher, today was the first I heard of the store, so I know our books are not (initially) going to be on it which is a shame. Our only route to getting onto the Kindle in the US is currently through Smashwords, maybe our books will be included through this route but its about time Amazon opened up to the fact that there is some pretty decent British based publishers out there who want their eBooks available through it store. It would also be nice if they allowed publishers to set their own prices.  Our eBooks retail at £4.95 which we believe is a fair price against our paperback which retail at £7.99.

Book to The Future

The launch of the recent Futurebook monthly events should tell the organisers of book fairs that the demand and thirst for knowledge for information on digital publishing under one roof is great.  Bar Chocolate in Soho was packed to the rafters on Thursday evening, so much so that many spilled onto the street outside for room, air and a place to network.   

Many thanks to Sam Missingham from the Bookseller for having the foresight to organise the event and I look forward to attending future meetings.  It is clear that the industry needs an organised digital book fair to discuss many of the topics buzzing around the ether in a small bar in Soho. For now the regular ‘Book to the Future’ meetings can suffices in terms of an exchange of knowledge, it is also clear that The London Book Fair (LBF) might not be the vehicle for such an event. For the past three years the LBF has pandered to the old guard with just a cursory nod toward digital publishing.

I think we need something new, something organised from outside the mainstream.  The establishment have had their chance to embrace digital and some of them are doing a great job with it while others are content to bury their heads in the sand. It would be great of course to have the full support of the proactive embracers of new publishing technology for a Digital London eBook Fair.

Publishing needs to move forward and examine all the opportunities open to it in terms of delivering content.  From augmented reality to fully immersive and interactive eBooks.  A forum to showcase technology and discuss the future book is needed. I know it would be hugely popular.

Who will re-invent the Book

We are in the transition point for books as people are introduced to eBooks and reading on electronic devices.  These eBooks naturally have to have a smooth transition which won’t alienate readers used to traditional book formats; hence we have page turning effects and formatted layout but eBooks will change.  The traditional formation will evolve, multi-media will make books something more contextually in-depth and rich adding layers of content providing a complete audio/visual experience which grows around the ‘reader’ taking him or her further into the realms of fiction like never before.

As a new generation of book readers evolve they won’t be locked in to the same mindset as the early adopters of digital books.  Technology will expand out options and the arrival of ePub 2.0 and subsequent versions will further enrich the eBook reading experience.  Content will always be king but the thrilling aspect will be the variety and richness of the content that can be delivered within a reading experience.  We will move away from page turning software and the concept of the page will also disappear.  Interactivity and cross-platform multi-media will become the norm in many instances.  Publishers will have to look at ways of delivering this new content, invariably authors will also become part of the overall process of the production of the eBook of the future. 

The Quiet Revolution and The Quiet Death of the eReader

As much as I love and support the idea of eReaders and e-Ink I think this technology will be absorbed by a new breed of multifunctional machines.  eReaders per-say are dying before they even had a chance to be born.  Consumers want functionality and not a machine that looks like it was designed in the 1980’s and has the same limitations.  Frankly the mass market is just not prepared to adopt a machine which only reads books.  The iPad is proving that there is a market for ePub to sit within a multifunction machine.  Where this puts companies which have invested so much time and money into machines - which will only share a very small proportion of the mature market - I don’t know, but publishing MUST wake up to the reality that consumers will drive the market and not publishing's desire to implement technology it does not want or particularly understand.

Manufacturers such as Dell and Elonex and a host of others are already developing tablet machines as a low cost alternative to the iPad and recognise that consumers will be attracted to alternatives which retain elements of computing which they understand, they do not want a one stop machine, hell, they can buy a paperback if all they want to do is read.   The traditional eReading machine will never become a part of our culture the way an iPhone or iPad will.  Equally I don’t expect to see hoards of people populating coffee shops with computing tablets, the adoption of ereading machines will be a quiet revolution which takes places in the solace of our homes.