On The Bookseller, Philip Stone looks at the sales performance of a novel, Those in Peril by Wilbur Smith, that was sold in e-book form by Apple and Amazon for £5.99 ($9.79) while bookstores sold the hardcover for £13.30 ($22.07)—30% off its list price of £19 ($31.07). The novel sold remarkably well in paper, becoming Smith’s seventh consecutive hardback number one bestseller.
One would think, Stone remarks, that such an inexpensive e-book should surely cannibalize the print sales—but that does not seem to be the case. Stone suggests that Smith must have gained more print readers than he lost from the digital discount.
Of course, I’m not sure that I’d necessarily call $9.79 inexpensive for an e-book (though it’s certainly cheaper than most publishers want to price new hardcovers), though since everything costs more in the UK it may be less expensive for there than it seems over here.
Regardless, I’d think that Baen has already shown pretty conclusively that cheap and free e-books can do a lot more to help publishers (or at least, that publisher) than they hurt. But on the other hand, if you look at it with “RIAA logic,” there’s no way to know whether the print book might have sold even better if cheap e-books hadn’t stolen some of its audience.
This “news” supports my belief that publishers and authors are missing out on additional sales that could be generated from those readers like me who are interested in combination packages — hardcover pbook + ebook — at discount pricing. I wonder how many of the hardcover buyers of Smith’s book would have also bought the ebook had it been available as part of the package for just a few dollars more than the hardcover. Even if only 5% of the hardcover buyers would have bought the package, it still generates more revenue than the publisher and author got by not offering the combination price.
Where a particular author sits on a bell curve is not important. One should look at the overall trend and going by the latest AAP figures they are clear – ebooks cannibalize print sales.
Though there might be some movement from readers to buyers – say from those who read used books in the past – I’ve seen no real argument offered that ebooks will bring in a lot of new readers. If any actual studies have been done it would be nice to see them.
@gous — I can only give you my personal example. I have been reading scifi/fantasy for decades. But in all those years, I avoided buying and reading books by authors like Eric Flint, David Weber, Elizabeth Moon, and John Ringo. I always found the cover designs off-putting and I was not much into hard military scifi.
Then 3 years ago I was given a Sony 505 as a holiday gift. One of the first places I went, because it was recommended, was Baen. Baen offered many of these authors’ ebooks as free downloads. Consequently, I decided to give them a try. The result is that I found several new authors whose writing I enjoy, such as Flint, Wber, and Moon. Now I buy the hardcover and the ebook versions of new releases from these authors. I went from not buying them at all to buying 2 copies of their new releases.
I don’t see the ebooks as cannibalizing the hardcovers. Because Baen reasonably prices its ebooks, I am willing to, and do, buy both. In fact, it was the ebooks that induced me to buy the hardcovers.
I agree that I am but one buyer in a universe of buyers, but I suspect that ebooks don’t cannibalize hardcover sales (or if they do, they do so minimally). Rather, I suspect that ebook sales have broadened the audience to include readers who would not have otherwise bought any version of an author’s work.
I just looked at Wilbur Smith’s latest on amazon. So far five reviews and the only 5 Star review was moronic. The others were one 2 and the rest 1s. All said they could not imagine this was the same author.
The price was also an outrageous $14.95.
So whatever the “statistics” say, the indications are that each title must stand on its own merits, ebook or otherwise.
I personally have at least doubled my consumption of books since the digital versions became available, and I have not bought a single paperback. I’m 62 and can count the hardcovers I have bought in my entire life on one hand.
OF COURSE ebooks will cannibalize hardcovers. Why do folks keep belaboring this point?
@Adin – Human behaviour varies a lot as your personal example illustrates. That is why we have to look at the trend in aggregate. Adult hardcover sales plunged by 43% in February 2011, with mass market paperback not far behind at a 41.5% drop. E-book sales soared by 202.3% in that month.
If this does not count as evidence of cannibalisation then I’m at a loss ast what evidence could.
Individual stories – even ones well written and argued as yours – would have to be backed up by some data before I’m willing to change my mind. That said it looks like we will know one way or another before the end of the year.
‘ as to what evidence’
I really need an editor.
It is early in the mainstreaming of ebooks so cannibalization has been minimal.
But cannibalization is coming and when it sets in it will be sudden, brutal, and deadly.
Remember that the BPHs rely on casual readers swooning over the latest NYT bestseller for the bulk of their profits while giving but a casual nod at the dedicated readers who constitute the bulk of the buyers of the rest of their catalog. Those are mostly the readers that have been switching to ebooks. Until now.
We’re all familiar with the price baseline reset of last summer that pretty much doubled the sales rate of Kindles and Nooks by *beginning* to draw in casual readers. The recent swell in ebook sales and the first hints of hardcover volume drops are just the beginning of a wave of cannibalization that is coming. And that cannibalization is going to be two-fold; a straight hardcover to ebook switch, which is why the BPHs instituted their Price Fix scheme so they can balance the lost print book sales (and increased returns) with ebook income, *and* a shift of sales from the lemming market of NYT bestsellers towards the backlist, midlist, PD, and other publishers who *aren’t* crippled by glass house tower overhead and can take advantage of the ebook disruption to grow their share of the market.
Give it another year or two and its pretty clear the BPHs market share is going down *and* the NYT bestseller’s share of the market will be going down even more.
Factor in the decline/reinvention of B&M bookstores and there will be massive cannibalization of hardcovers very soon, followed by an (upwards) baseline price reset of hardcovers as they are repositioned as luxury/collector items.
There’s a lot of things going on (Borders’ bankruptcy, B&N’s belated resizing, etc) all at once and the turmoil is masking some of the nastier effects to the digital transition (loss of total retail shelf space, for one) but there’s a tipping point ahead and that’s when it all hits the fan.
The future is *not* going to be like the (recent) past and the fate of hardcovers is *not* going to be determined by dedicated readers like us, but by the casual readers. The numbers to look for aren’t the ones showing decline in hardcover sales (sincce the Price Fix scheme is intended to offset those) but the ones showing a decline in aggregate NYT Bestseller market share and I’m not sure anybody is even tracking those numbers.
Wait for it; it might take til 2013 or 2014 but the tipping point is coming.
BPH???? Please, clue me in.
“BPH???? Please, clue me in.”
Big Publishing House
When discussing the failings/dangers of the industry, there is the (unfair, really) practice of going rom the speciio the general, lumping all the publishers together as if the failings of one were the failings of all, which we all know is not true. While the glass tower conglomerates that have shaped the industry for the past few decades think they can shape the ebook era (and they are doing the best they can to do so), there are plenty of small, more agile players (some of them autonomous units within the conglomerate oligarchies) that do understand the opportunies that ebook mainstreaming offers to the publishers that take advantage of the changes in consumer behavior fostered by ebooks.
There are changes underway.
Further changes are coming.
There will be winners and there will be losers.
And the odds are right now looking like there is going to be a big *net* shift in power away from the bigger players towards the smaller.
Which is long overdue.
see this from a newer Teleread article; the future is now and if those numbers hold they are brutal
“A 169 per cent surge in e-book revenues since the start of the year contrasted with a 24.8 per cent decline in print book sales to $442m over the two-month period. February figures showed steeper declines in some print categories, with adult hardcover sales falling 43 per cent to $46.2m and mass-market paperbacks down 41.5 per cent at $29.3m.”