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Digital to the rescue

09.01.12 | Neill Denny

The dust is still settling from Christmas but the trends are clear: the celeb market down, cookery down, but other areas reasonably strong, and the bloodbath some had predicted was partially averted.

The Steve Jobs biog and The Etymologicon were this year’s dark horses. Bricks-and-mortar stores had a great pre-Christmas week after online’s last delivery day had passed, while Christmas Day itself is now, courtesy of e-readers, a day to sell books in considerable numbers. Print sales for 2011 were down 6%, but digital will have offset much, perhaps most, of that.

The coming year feels, as Tom Weldon puts it, as if it will be “a year of unusual consequence”. Quite simply, there is lots going on. Publishers have to move more of their revenues to digital while making enough money from print to keep the show on the road. All traditional bookshops and chains must figure out how to make a profit against this unforgiving backdrop, perhaps by linking physical books with online. And with the growth of e-books will come the concomitant growth in e-book piracy, which the trade must nip in the bud—perhaps with the help of Google, itself now a player in the trade.

E-books represent the first format change in living memory, and with a probable market share of around 20% by next Christmas, a generation of mananagement who have never dealt with a format change before will need to adapt fast.  

Unfortunately this rethink is happening in the midst of a near-recession. The consumer mood right now is very dark, although it will lift gradually through the year. The Jubilee and Olympics will provide a shot in the arm, while by next autumn the euro crisis will have blown itself out. For publishers, e-enabled export will be a welcome fillip as many emerging economies are growing fast. This could also be the year when, courtesy of e-books, customer (i.e. reader) data finally arrives in publishing. All that remains is to figure out what to do with it.

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By Leko

I am sure Tom is right as the year ahead has an incredibly exciting agenda. We shouldn't loose sight of e book pricing, the Agency pricing investigation is getting underway and I am sure that whatever it's outcome it will help shape the landscape for years to come. As we have seen before changes to the way that prices are regulated have profound effects on the long term health of our market.

Mon, 09/01/2012 - 15:13
By pixie Hotmuffin

Still can't comment on the BA conference shakeup........

Mon, 09/01/2012 - 20:24
By Adele Ward

Even for small publishers like us the growth in the sales of ebooks is surprising and important for our future. I agree pricing is the big issue.

Tue, 10/01/2012 - 22:04
By Christopher Greenaway

I hear adverts on the radio now for QuickBooks accounting software; free to use online or on your desktop. Just a few years ago, they were selling their software like everyone else, now they're having to give it away just to stay in the game, changing their business model to make money out of complementary services rather than the software itself. Their 'value add' activities have become their core business, just as happened with many other companies, some global household names. Open Source is fantastic, but it changes peoples' expectations, and I think ebooks will see the same shift. We price many of our ebooks at not far off the cost of their print equivalent, maybe cover price minus print cost at least. But why would someone buy a book about a generic subject when they can read what they want about that subject for free from countless other authors whose business model is to give away the book and try to claw back some income from advertising or other services and upsells?

Fiction is perhaps harder to replace, or is it? There are so many books by so many authors that unless I want to read something by a specific author, the choice is really bewildering. Certainly if I want a disposable holiday read, does it matter if I buy something from a published author I've never read before, or a newcomer whose book is cheaper or even free?

I think that at the moment, the publishing industry's ebook pricing model is very simple: "try it and see if anyone buys it".

Downloadable 'apps' such as the Angry Birds game have been a runaway success for three reasons; firstly they are very easy to obtain, secondly they are very good and thirdly their price is very low. For something that easy to get and that much fun, $.99 or $2.99 is a no-brainer. You'd feel mean if you didn't buy it!

I think that the ebook 'revolution' sits on the broader open source and app software revolution and therefore we have a way of predicting where it will go.

Some companies like Novell and Oracle have tried to go with this new business model with some success, others like SAP and Kodak tried to hang on to their legacy business and made the switch too little too late. Big publishers - take note.

CGW Publishing

Thu, 23/02/2012 - 02:42

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