TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Digital Book World’ Category

By Chris Meadows

Mike Shatzkin’s blog has an interesting essay about putting together an advisory council for the Digital Book World conference, and some of the challenges that come with running such a conference.

One challenge has to do with knowing some change is going on or about to go on in digital publishing, but not knowing who is a part of it or whether those who are will talk about it. The other has to do with with publishers being willing to discuss things privately, but not publicly—e-book royalty rates, for example.

And as with any business, nobody wants to reveal everything they’re doing in the presence of the competition.

The post is an interesting reminder that publishing, and e-publishing, is still a highly-competitive business, and running conferences for such businesses can be a tricky balancing act. But Shatzkin feels that the advisory council is up to meeting the necessary challenges.

By Paul Biba

From the press release:

F+W Media announced today the launch of its Digital Book World Community, a new industry resource for book publishers and publishing professionals offering educational and informational resources designed to help them successfully navigate the digital transition. The Community springs forth from the successful inaugural annual conference which was held last week. Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, Director of Programming and Business Development, will continue to head the community, in close collaboration with a newly formed Community Advisory Board. A conference recap, schedule of upcoming seminars, WEBcasts and weekly roundtables; and regularly updated news and commentary from industry professionals can be found at the newly relaunched www.digitalbookworld.com.

By Paul Biba

Untangling and understanding the ebook supply chain

Peter Balis, John Wiley and Sons; Niel Del Young, Hachette Book Group; Leslie Hulse, Harper Collins; Andrew Weinstein, Ingram Digital; Mark Coker, Smashwords

Ingram: in ebook supply chain a lot of posturing going on and in a gawky stage. Roles are still shaking out. Still a role for wholesaler in the supply chain. They provide multi-publisher aggregating platform for retailers. They keep track of all the retailers selling the publishers’ books. For majority of US publishers, enforcing territories by the billing address of the purchaser seems to be becoming the standard. Adobe platform is something to watch for 2010 – they are trying to foster innovation. No shortage of 4 color ebooks out there, but since Amazon/Kindle dominates the conversation this means that most people don’t even know about them.

Wiley: understand how supply chain operates, but don’t have a standard operating procedure for digital, but upstream and downstream. Basic formats are PDF and Epub. One reason that ebooks may not have cover is that the publisher could not get the digital rights to the image. Especially true of older books. Wiley can’t afford to deal with small retail accounts and an aggregator makes sense for them. No good way to audit sales make by retailers. Majority of titles they see are not hacked ebooks, they are primarily manuscripts, galleys and scanned paper books. Blio/Microsoft should be watched in 2010.

Harper: had to do a big effort to get the digital rights and establish the royalties for digital. Many times had the digital rights but no royalties were established. Need wider adoption and implementation of Onix. Incomplete integration with Onix is hurting ability to get ebooks distributed. Is a need for an independent auditing body for digital sales. Dark horse for 2010 is Blio/Microsoft.

Hachette: just because we go to Epub doesn’t mean that all the people downstream in the chain can take the file and so delayed implementation until could make this work. Hachette currently restricts ebook sales to US because territories can change daily and hard to flow this info out to supply chain. Also hard to track supply chain to see if proper territorial information has been transmitted down the chain and complied with. Blio/Microsoft should be watched in 2010.

By Paul Biba

Ebook Challenges: Competing with free and getting the timing right.

Mindy Stockfield, Hyperion; Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group; Steve Ross, formerly of Harper Collins; Michel Tamblyn, Kobo; Brian O’Leary, Magellan Media Partners. Publishers’ margins are very small. Products releases should be windowed. Same question arose in the ’50s when introducing mass market editions. Decided to release them later. Same with DVDs. Represents authors and so asks if you give it away for free what is author’s share of zero? Be careful on innovation in pricing because you can create a market expectation that you can’t deal with later if you model doesn’t work. Ebooks great for mid-list authors who can’t get a publisher to take them on. Ebooks as a small percentage of the industry can cause massive damage to the whole industry if not priced right. Electronic sales are not counted in best seller lists and difference in place in list is not much. If ebooks syphon off sales this can drop a major book on the list.

Kobo: giving first volume of a series, especially an old series, can work,and is also good as “training wheels”. Free commercial titles are a relative rarity so hard to develop information yet on what’s happening. Ebooks are a new release business. The first 90 days represents at least half of sales and windowing radically reduces the amount of sales. No evidence yet that low prices have hurt the industry as a whole.

Hyperion: came from Disney Channel, where they had a windowing strategy for every one of their shows. Feels it should be don’t on a title and author basis, especially since there is so little data available yet. Need to try a lot of new stuff to develop a database of what’s going on. Finding that if give away part of the book it pulls a lot of ebook sales. No need to give away the whole book. With “Long Tail” gave away free ebook with purchase of paper book and did well. Getting bad press on Amazon for not releasing digital edition. Looking back, delaying new Hitchhiker book by 6 weeks was too long. When released as ebook people didn’t know it was out and lost sales. Also got a lot of bad press from Apple fans as released an Apples edition at the same time as hard cover edition at the same price. Caused a lot of ill feeling when cheaper ebook was released.

Steve Ross: originally felt that the more you give away digital content the more you will sell print editions, but talked to a lot of industry people and their analysis and testing showed no examples of where free had pushed other sales. Has changed his mind about free. Market expectations created by Amazon at $9.99 will be difficult to break. Publishers don’t think that Amazon will continue its current pricing strategy much longer. Ebooks can have a detrimental effect on place in Times best seller list. Would window ebooks for books which release under 100,000 cause it will help sales.

By Paul Biba

Tim McCall, Penguin Group USA; Michael Tamblyn, Kobo; Kassia Lrozser, Booksquare; Ginger Clark, Curtis Brown, Ltd.; Laura Dawson, KNJ Dawson

Ebook pricing: what they should cost and why

Penguin: have to start with the intrinsic value of the material and the format. Need to look at cost – from the time its bought to the time it goes to the consumer. Ebook should not be looked at on its own, especially since ebooks are such a small point of the total market (<4%). Ultimately ebooks will get to the point where they are just another format and will be released and priced on that format’s merits at that particular time. Penguin sees that $9.99 sells a lot more ebooks but does not seem to sell more Penguin books over the breadth of their list. Does not seem to enhance overall market. Publishers have not done a good job showing consumers that publishers have a value. Digital prices are artificially low, but that has made digital grow so fast.

Curtis Brown: literary agent. author gets from 7.5 to 15% of list rights depending on type of book. Common to get 25% of net today. When publisher licenses rights out to another media author gets about 50%. Amazon told agents directly that Amazon feels that 9.99 is fair for ebook and readers expect that. Costs about $200 to covert an average ebook. Amazon determines which international edition to sell based on location of purchase not location of buyer.

Kobo: publishers often tell Kobo they are trying to defend price of hardcovers and they want to sell at hardcover list price which runs form $14 to over $20. Those books don’t sell. Consumers buy from Kobo primarily in $6 to $12 area for the most part. Very few sales at above $18. Average of ebook purchased through Kobo is $8.76. Does not feel that Kobo is competing against piracy at all – simplicity of purchase process and immediacy of purchase is most important to consumers.

Kassia Kroszer: in a marketplace where info moves fast and needs to stay current you can sell an ebook for $75. Example SEO Book: DRM free, updates for life, extremely current information. To do this have to give customers more than a book. Works better for non-fiction. Some of these sell for up to $150, they are information based. Digital-first publishers do a much better job of giving a high quality-produced product than the big publishers are doing.

By Paul Biba

Larry Kirshbaum, LJK Literary Movement; Ken Cader, PUblishers Lunch; Ken Brooks, Cengage Learning; Evan Schnittman, Oxford University Press; Mike Shatzkin, moderator

If you were publishing a book this month and did an ebook simultaneously what percentage of total sales would it sell?: They answer: 17% at highest to 5%; 10% now and 35% lifetime; 6% to 15%; 10%

Apple and Google enter the market, what will this do?: They answer: good news for publishers because add big players to compete with Amazon; Amazon will continue to grow but its share will fall; Apple is just an experiment at this point, but Google will have a major impact; Amazon becoming device agnostic with release of Blackberry app and huge potential for further growth; industry needs Amazon, bookstores and big box stores and has to find a model that works for all of them

Erights: new Amazon 70/30 deal will not affect major best sellers but will be beneficial for smaller titles

International rights: will territorial rights survive with ebooks? don’t see why it should change anything and technology may mak
e it easier to enforce; defining territories will be a real mess – where you are, where you bought the device, where you are when you buy the book, etc?; maybe better to split rights as “world English” and “translation”;

Will legacy publishers need to scale down in the next few years: physical infrastructure will need to go down; fixed costs will be cut throughout the supply chain; publishers have cut to the bone and don’t need to be smaller they need to be more responsive; large publishers have one major thing on their side – they can still create “magic”; science of aggregating audiences may take away from the necessity for “magic”

Other comments: in audiobook world a Netflix model has been very successful and this will work well and get bigger in the library model;

By Paul Biba

Liza Daly, ThreePress Consulting, discussed problems often found with current ebook production.

Typical problems with current ebooks: plain text cover as opposed to photo; often have to step through blank pages, irrelevant copyright info, wrong ISBNs, table of contents with chapter numbers that are irrelevant content and readers hate this (if use samples then up to half of sample is often irrelevant pages), misspellings, bad line breaks (in some cases the pirated version is actually better than the professionally better one).

By Paul Biba

Angela Bole, Book Industry Study Group; Kelly Gallagher, Bowker.

First presentation of data from a major industry survey ofebook consumers. 95% confidence level

Demographics: male 51%, female 49%; income over 75K 37%, 35K to 75K, 38%, under 35K, 25%; 23% RURAL, 24% URBAN, 43% suburban

Whey e instead of P?: in order 1. affordability, 2. easy to download, 3. readability, 4. instant access, 5. portability

34% decreased their purchase of hardcover books

What extras would you pay for: in order 1. connect with other readers, 2. color photos graphics, 3. give/lend 4. wireless access

19% now purchase ebooks exclusively and 25% now purchase mostly ebooks

When asked about the major benefits of ebooks three of the major benefits relate solely to price.

Would you wait to buy an ebook after print book comes out? 30% will wait, 24% will buy the print book, 34% not sure

Effect of DRM on ebook purchases: 38% don’t know, 34% not an issue, 28% concerned

Most popular devices: 47% computer/laptop, 32% Kindle, 11% iPhone

By Paul Biba

Richard Nash, Cursor; Eoin Purcell, Green Lamp Media; Chris Morrow, Northshire Books; Angela James, Carina Press discussed this at Digital Book World. Notes:

Northshire Books: physical bookstores still exist. Print on demand at the retail level. Installed an Espresso 2 years ago (similar machine in photo).

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By Paul Biba

How to optimize ebooks so they look spiffy and are as fun and easy to use as possible?

Is E Ink really the ultimate? Are today’s e-readers good enough?

Chewing this over at Digital Book World were Josh Koppel of ScrollMotion (product in photo), Andrew Malkin of Zinio, Brad Inman of  Vook, Maja Thomas of the Hachette Book Group, Eric Freese of Aptara and Laura Dawson of LJNDawson, the moderator. Some notes on the various panelists:

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By Paul Biba

Dedicated e-book readers won’t be the easiest sell if you go by Verso‘s 2009 Survey of Book Buying Behavior—presented at DigitalBookWorld.  On the positive, the overwhelming majority of owners say they do not pirate e-books.

Participating were 5,640 respondents, 48% male and 51% female. Here are Verso’s questions and findings, with a 1.6% margin of error and a 95% confidence level.

Are you likely to buy an e-reader (survey conducted in November/December of last year): 49% not at all likely; 23% not sure. In the 65+ year old category over 60 % say not at all likely.

Of e-reader owners, planned e-book purchases in the next year: not sure 35%; 10 or more 6.5%; 5-9 11%; 3-4 12%; 1-2 25%; none 8%.

Bundling: "would you buy a "deluxe" hardcover if it included and ebook for a modest surcharge?": 19% likely; 19% somewhat likely; 35% not sure.

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By Paul Biba

 –Janet Evanovich can get a CD of all of her books on eBay for $11.

–Sherrilyn Kenyon shows 29 hits on VUZE.

–All five of top fiction and non-fiction books available as pirated editions. Some of the hits have all of her books.

–28% of e-reader owners have used file sharing sites to download free e-books, according to a Verso study.

Piracy is the most important issue facing digital publishers, says Brian Napack, Macmillan president, and he cited the above examples at Digital Book World. Agree or disagree? Speak up in our comments area.

Napack said—remember these are his opinions—that piracy took a big chunk out of music business, where he spent a lot of time.

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By Paul Biba

The biggest opportunities are in smartphones and netbooks and notebooks, not dedicated e-readers with E Ink, says Amanda Edmonds, Google’s director of strategic partnerships. Her points at DigitalBookWorld:

• Google wants a model that simplifies life for consumers and publishers. Consumers will be searching for a lot of backlist books.
• Google Editions wants to monetize book searching and buying. Can purchase print and digital editions. Search traffic from smartphones increasing faster than search rate for PCs. Has ability to share notes; 39% of people who access cloud computing say that they do so for sharing purposes.

By Paul Biba

Editor’s Note: these posts are my notes taken during the presentation, so they will not be of great literary quality. PB

How to take brands into digital world. Social media is exploding in last 5 years. Publishers have to reinvent themselves to survive. 5 ideas to think about how to change:

1. Build consumer brands. Public needs to identify with publisher and not just author and retailer. Branding today is much different than traditional branding methods. B to B companies are fading away and need to become business to consumer companies. Authors are now connecting with customers and authors have more control over them. Can build an audience before you have a book. Audiences are connecting with authors also and so authors are building their own communities and they can ask their communities what sort of books to write and even what publishers to use. Publishers need to drive the direction of fan pages by creating a brand to get ahead of the authors. Distributors are becoming publishers themselves and taking control of area.

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By Paul Biba

I’m at Digital Book World in New York. The program begins at 8:30 EST and WiFi seems to work, so I’ll probably be able to post during the day. Here’s a shot of the main venue.

By Paul Biba

I’ll be at DBW on Tuesday and Wednesday covering the program for TeleRead. Given the vagaries of free time and WiFi, it may be that regular news postings will be a bit thin for those two days. Normal news should resume on Thursday.

Meanwhile the conference looks quite exciting with a lot of targeted presentations that should be of interest to all our readers.

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