E-books and e-book readers are a relatively recent phenomenon. All the same, they seem to have been adopted very rapidly by the public. Much of the credit for that must surely be given to the Amazon Kindle reader – in particular the Kindle 2.0 which was released in February of 2009. Amazon’s upgraded third generation Kindle was unveiled in August of 2010 and, despite doom laden predictions for the Kindle following the launch of Apple’s iPad, is selling more quickly than ever. There can’t be much doubt that it was the Kindle 2.0 that really helped e-books to take off.
Another key factor was the huge choice of Kindle books on offer. Amazon has always been ahead of the chasing pack in terms of the number of titles on offer. At the moment they have more 750,000 Kindle books available on their website – and those are just the paid titles. There are 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. E-books have completely revised the long established publishing cycle. Not only are e-books cheaper than printed books – due to the fact that they require no paper, ink or bindings – but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be made available at the same time as the hardback. The e-book version is available immediately – no need to wait months for the paperback to be released.
It seems obvious that hardback sales could be impacted by the fact that a cheaper version is available simultaneously with the hardback edition. Amazon advise that they are currently selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 hard cover editions. This seems to have caused a great deal of concern amongst many of the major publishing companies. They have already had some fairly fraught discussions with Amazon regarding e-book pricing.
Publishers like Harper Collins, Penguin and Hachette recently moved to the “agency model” for their e-books. In layman’s terms, the price is set by the publisher as opposed to 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 retaliated by awarding “one star” reviews to books where they felt that the Kindle book price was 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. There have already been some price reductions.
Adopting such a profit oriented approach seems to be a little short sighted on the part of the publishers. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that e-book reader owners read a lot of books. You wouldn’t buy an e-book reader if you read a book a month, would you? In other words, e-book reader users are the major publisher’s target audience.
It seems obvious – just even – that e-books should cost less than traditional books. In addition to the lack of paper, ink and bindings, they have virtually no delivery fees associated with them. They are also more environmentally friendly – even allowing for the materials used in the e-book readers themselves. 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.
Whilst it’s not out of the question that the publisher’s tactics may help to maintain their profits in the short term, they run the risk of antagonising their best customers by adopting this approach. Artificial price fixing is likely to antagonise the buying public and, after a series of one star reviews and public calls for boycotts, authors would most likely also be discontented. Publishers have every bit as much to gain from the e-book revolution as the public. The savings apply on both sides of the fence, publishers save money – which should be passed on to the public. If publishers can modify their business model to accommodate e-books, then they will continue to enjoy success. If, on the other hand, their drive towards short term profits means that they do not fully capitalise on the new possibilities offered by this new medium, both their readers and their authors will likely reject them.
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