Philip Ruppel, the president of McGraw-Hill Professional, has an article with the above name in Mashable today.
His 5 trends are:
1. Enhanced ebooks are coming and will only get better;
2. The device war is nearly over;
3. The $9.99 ebook won’t last forever
Amazon popularized the $9.99 price point for best-seller trade titles, driving the widespread consumer adoption of the Kindle and consumption of e-books. This has caused confusion among many consumers who simply think every e-book should be $9.99 or less. But the majority of titles offered on Amazon are priced above $9.99, especially those with unique interactive features. For professional and technical publishers like McGraw-Hill, our e-books cannot stand the low, mass market pricing some consumers think should be applied to every e-book. Our costs are invested in extensive product and editorial development of sophisticated and technical content; the cost of paper, printing, and binding are a fraction of the real expense. And for some very specific and technical subject areas, our markets are much smaller. We simply couldn’t afford to publish the work if it must be priced at the everyday low, low price of $9.99.
The real opportunity for publishers will be to develop e-books that offer the kind of interactive features mentioned above. Our customers will demand interactive books that provide a much better, more informed and enriching experience. For them, the experience (not the cost) is often the primary driver.
4. The contextual upsell will be a business model to watch
5. Publishers will be more important than ever.
Ruppel’s wrong about one thing: The “device war” was a done deal when most devices agreed to read ePub, leaving us with a “format war” between ePub and Kindle/Mobi. That “war” will be over when Kindles start reading (and Amazon startes selling) ePub formats, like everybody else.
“The device war is nearly over” This tells me all I need to know about this bozo.
What is really scary is that these individuals who are making such poor predictions are often placed high up in the publishing companies. Reminds me of captains of sinking ships.
Personally, I am not so sure about “enhanced” ebooks since that requires several changes including:
– a paradigm shift in consumers wanting “enhanced” books (the only enhancement I think would sell could be the one that makes the ebook smell like a stinky real book for all those people who can’t give up their books because of the smell)
– huge increases in battery capacity so that devices powered would last long enough to enjoy the enhanced ebooks
– huge improvements in screens that allow readers to read in full saturated colour in sunlight instead of washed out pixelq/mirasol which aren’t even available commonly yet.
– some sort of standard format that allows these “enhanced” ebooks to be viewed across all devices.
This is at first infuriating but also informative.
I think he’s right about one thing -what he calls the “device war” being nearly over. Kindle books will soon be readable on the nookcolor through the browser, and maybe even through a Kindle app, in addition to all the other tablets and phones. So when mirasol becomes available on the nook, what will be Amazon’s motivation to make their own hardware and sell it at a loss? It just puts them at a disadvantage to Google.
He’s not saying that anyone “won” the device war. I doubt Amazon will stop making the Kindle device entirely or that B&N will stop selling e-books entirely- just that in the future e-books and ereaders will be two distinct markets.
Howard, you’re half right about your assessment of his opinions (anyone who says the device war is over about *any* device is wrong). His #5 “Publishers will be more important than ever” is really revealing about him. His comments, whether right or wrong, are nothing more than self-serving trial balloons. It is easier than ever for someone to self-publish. Publishers are needed for promotion and taking money out of authors and readers pockets. If he feels they are so important, why are there more typos and other glaring mistakes in books than ever before?!
Peter – I hear what you’re saying but that is not what he actually said. He said the Device war is nearly over, and anyone who can seriously suggest that is someone who has a clearly confused idea about devices and technology.
His statement on enhanced eBooks is also quite silly imho. He is correct is predicting a new form of enhanced eBook. There is no doubt that there will be exciting new formats. But suggesting that they will be anything other than an interesting special interest category is disingenuous.
I believe he is also deluded if he thinks there is a future in higher than 10 dollar eBooks. He may wish it were so but his moan about his costs are not convincing and the world of eBooks has moved on. he needs to get used to a sub 10 dollar world.
His comment on up-selling is so unimportant it is hardly worth commenting on.
Point 5) “Publishers Will Be More Important Than Ever”. This is patently unconvincing. It is also difficult to swallow in a transition world where Publishers are doing such an appalling job. They are screwing their customers for price, DRM, Geo restrictions and then when they get the eBooks they are riddled with typos. Publishers have a long way to go before they can get anywhere near his ambition.
I have to say I find it quite shocking to find someone who is in such a high position in the Publishing world holding these kinds of views. It makes me quite cynical about the future success of some of the big publishers.
The only form of “enhanced” e-book I’m at all interested in is one that’s enhanced by being properly edited and proof-read, rather than the pathetic attempts by some publishers to sell me a raw OCR dump for higher-than-hardcover price.
The article is mostly interesting for its demonstration of how utterly out of touch with reality Mr. Ruppel is.
I couldn’t agree more with @Peter. Project Gutenberg, for example, goes to extraordinary lengths to scan, OCR, proofread and format text for non-digitized text. Since essentially all text today is already in an editor or word processor of some kind, it is inexcusable that simple spell-checking and formatting is not performed with the same ease and accuracy as pBooks.
I couldn’t care less for color pictures on tiny screens. Give me properly formatted B&W reading material. I’ll handle the enhanced stuff on a properly-sized monitor.