Now is the winter of my desk content, and I have been trying to catch up on some overdue reading.
In November 2010, Forrester published the results of an e-book survey, “eBook Buying is About to Spiral Upward”. The full report is available for $499, and author James McQuivey offers a helpful summary that can be downloaded for free.
The survey first tried to establish how readers get books today. Asked “In which of the following ways have you acquired a book in the past six months?”, those responding most often said “A friend gave/loaned me a book” (50%).
The next most frequent answer was “Got a book from the public library” (38%). Chain bookstores (38%) and Amazon (28%) were third and fifth on the list, with “Found an older book in my personal collection” (28%) coming between them.
So three of the four most likely ways someone gets a book are: loan, borrow or revisit – not buy. This got me thinking about digital books.
If the Forrester survey holds up, and it does feel right, the way we most often acquire books doesn’t mesh well with how e-books are sold. Most e-book files and services have not been configured to readily support giving away or loaning digital content.
There are some limited exceptions: you can share books across devices linked to a common Amazon account, for example. But doing that gives someone access to every book in your collection. You’re probably going to be careful about who you offer that option.
There have also been some recent efforts to let readers lend e-books once, but retailers like Amazon are slow to expand the service. Publishers don’t care that much for used books and libraries.
Still, publishing benefits when people want to read. “Fewer people read these days” is a meme, but what if the move to locked-down digital content was part of the problem?
That is to say: If sharing books is part of what encourages us to want to read them, then not being able to share books risks reducing the size of the market we’re organized to serve.
In various forums, I’ve made the claim that the challenge for editors is migrating from determining what will be published to figuring out how what is published will be discovered. If two of the main ways people acquire content involves lending or borrowing, e-books may need to find a new kind of hello.
” … the challenge for editors is migrating from determining what will be published to figuring out how what is published will be discovered. If two of the main ways people acquire content involves lending or borrowing, e-books may need to find a new kind of hello.”
Two excellent points Imho. Both are critical in the transition to eDevices.
However where I am not convinced is the implication I take (perhaps not accurately ?) from the suggestion in the survey that people would buy more books if they could not borrow them. I believe this is utterly false and if the survey is stating this then I personally don’t trust it.
I believe that borrowing triggers far far more purchasing than the books borrowed. I base it on my own social circle’s experience, that of growing up in a family of readers as well as what I read about others. It’s not scientific but it persuades me 🙂
A case in point is a book that was lent to me about 3 years ago on a trip to Poland. I abs loved it and ended up buying 14 other books by that author in the following two years. I also lent about 4 or 5 copies to some friends and they went on to buy their own additional titles by the author. The same applied to my reading of ‘Tuesdays With Morrie’. I lent it to .. wow… it must be about a dozen people. I know from direct feedback that they all LOVED it and bought their own copies and copies of his other books (apart from his most recent which was, sadly, rubbish).
A new type of hello?
Free books.
Free samples.
And the best hello of all: cheap pricing.
If the price is low enough most people will readily gift books they love to friends and family.
Felix I believe those things you mention are important. Correct pricing at a price that is affordable, triggers impulse buying and undermines the motivation to borrow or download.
However the meaning of the “new type of hello” in the article is, I believe, what he says in the last paragraph:
” .. figuring out how what is published will be discovered”
In other words, in the absence of the primary ways people claimed (in the survey of this article) they encountered their books – borrowing and libraries – how will people encounter the new books being published ? If you add to those two the diminishing presence of bookshops, what remains is a major quandary in years to come for publishers to let readers know what is available and to encourage them to read. I personally do not believe web sites like Amazon are anything like sufficient, except to sell best sellers.
If the prices are cheaper then there will be no need to lend. People will readily purchase ebook and hard copy formats