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E-book biz too fixated on regular readers? If so, what to do about it?
October 2, 2009 | 7:21 am
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By David Rothman
“I’m not the audience e-readers should be aimed at,” writes Jason Pinter, a best-selling author and Huffington Post contributor. “Yet for some strange reason I am. By marketing the Kindle to me—i.e. ‘adults’ who already read regularly—publishing is merely doubling down on the biggest problem facing the industry: not 
enough people read books. Right now, e-readers are being promoted as an alternative to paper. Big mistake. E-readers should be promoted as a cool option for non readers or hesitant readers. Instead, they’re stunningly being ignored.”
Is Pinter right? I’m of mixed mind. I agree with the premise that potentially there is a whole new audience out there for e-books—people who currently don’t patronize bookstores often, or at all. But how to reel them in? That’s the tricky part. Oprah’s pushing of the Kindle was A Good Thing despite my aversion to the machine’s DRM and proprietary formats. She reached non-book-buyers, not jut regulars. Trouble is, she didn’t provide sufficient follow-up to make her fans feel comfortable with the machines, so they could enthusiastically spread the word about the joys of e-reading.
So how to go beyond the regulars? First off, e-book-capable devices and the actual e-books need to be cheaper. The $200 Sony Readers and the like are progress, but many more people would buy at half that price. The good news—if we think of the welfare of the e-book business as a whole, not just that of the makers of dedicated devices—is that e-books are a natural for netbooks and iPhones and can piggyback on other apps. Lowering the price of the books themselves would help, too. The $9.95 price at Amazon for bestsellers still is not low enough.
Second, the industry should be get behind the idea of a well-stocked national digital library system to bring down the cost of legally reading books. People want free. The system could be well-integrated with schools and libraries and promote love of reading, period. Libraries of any kind, E or P, serve in effect as marketers for stores.
Third, although publishers have made progress at reaching readers who are members of minority groups, much more needs to be done.
Fourth, there should be more follow-up. Many of Oprah’s people faced major technical obstacles even with the Kindle, which doesn’t need to be hooked up to a desk computer. She should have arranged for more hand-holding for her fans and have promoted these services on TV.
Update, 12:44 p.m.: The Huffington Post piece appeared to me to come from a Post intern. But now it carries a different byline, Pinter’s, and I’ll go with it. I’ve made the swap in the TeleRead post above. No sure what happened. Perhaps the Post mistakenly slugged the item. The date on the Post piece, October 5, is still wrong, unless the Post dates material in advance.
(Via Kindle Review, which, as I write this, is still attributing the post to the itern)
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Comments:
I agree that the segments of consumers being targeted are the wrong ones, or rather, the old ones… the people who already read. Marketers are doing little to bring new people, especially young people, into the e-book reading fold.
But singling out the Kindle and Amazon isn’t right… it’s the entire e-book industry that’s falling down on the job of bringing new readers in. Part of that problem is being so concerned with dedicated readers, which (as David points out) are too expensive for young people to just go out and snatch up… and have little to offer them that they want, besides the one task of reading.
Instead, the industries should be encouraging reading on whatever device they have, be it a cellphone, laptop, iTouch, netbook, gameboy, whatever, and showing consumers all the options at their disposal.
Maybe some of Oprah’s fans would have been just as happy to read on the PCs they already owned, if Amazon would’ve let them. I’d like to see Oprah promote e-books in general, talk about ePub, and the many places where books are available that people can read on whatever they have.
Myself, I’m wondering how the author would prevent regular readers from taking advantage of super-low-priced, or even ‘free’ ebooks?
Would there be some sort of registration process? ‘I never read books, therefore I get to read for free.’
Bizarre. Nothing in his suggestions addresses getting people who do not now read, to want to read in future.
Maybe what he should be suggesting is grant money to create porn vooks for young gentlemen, and romance vooks for young women.
@Pond: Amen about the power of “free.” That’s why libraries and bookstores can complement each other. Yes, it would have been nicer if he’d included some really good concrete suggestions.
Thanks,
David
Some people are trying to add videos to books so non-readers will get interested. That’s nice but if they’re watching videos, they’re not reading. But I guess you could conceivably sell an ebook reader that plays videos to a non-reader to watch. Isn’t that really the point – sales? If so, the answers are different from the question of getting non-readers to read.
If you’re talking about getting non-readers to read, doesn’t that seed have to be sown when they’re young?
My child finally picked up a book voluntarily to read it for pleasure when the Harry Potter books became famous. He read the whole series. He also read the Stephanie Meyers vampire books. Apparently he’ll read what is popular among his group of friends, which can apparently be manipulated by advertising. But then, a lot of people are only interested in reading best-sellers, right? At least he’s reading something.
I don’t see how you’re going to use e-readers to draw in people who don’t normally read (unless you use them to show videos) because essentially it’s the same thing – reading. Lots and lots of words. And considering the cost, they’re far more likely to head to their local library or borrow a book from a friend, if they get an urge to read at all.
Oprah and others on television do have power. People like to do what everyone else is doing, what’s popular. Make a big deal out of reading and there are those who will try it.
More television commercials for books would probably help, particularly if they have good video trailers to show. I wonder, though, how many people who need videos to get them to pick up a book will actually read the entire book. Probably some. But then again, if they’ve bought the book, whether they read it or not, goal met.
In the question of getting non-readers interested in reading, I don’t see that the format is particularly relevant.
But again, if all you’re wanting to do is sell more ebook readers, then by all means, make them do things besides display ebooks. Make them into phones and video players, mp3 players, and cameras, and web surfers, and schedulers. Yes, we already have those, but we’re not calling them ebook readers, and that’s the important part, right?
I dunno, but to me, the issue isn’t ebook reading—its *reading*. Period.
Over the past few decades reading-as-entertainment has been on a steady decline. Children’s books. Comics. Even coloring books are in decline. Part of it is the increased competition from “dynamic/interactive” entertainment; tv, videos, gaming. But part is the reduced availability/access to contents. The rise of the mega-bookstores severely reduced the availability of books at secondary retailers (dept stores, books stores, newspaper/magazine stores—themselves dying out or evolving away from books) and the steady increase in prices and decrease in variety of what little is available is reducing the profile of reading. Add in an educational system that makes reading a distateful chore for kids and you have an entire generation with little taste for reading. (Do they *really* have to choose such antique literary works? How about slipping in some humor and contemporary adventure texts? If Rowling has proven anything, it is that kids will read for fun if the material is right.) Remember that demographic report from a few months back about the age breakdown of Kindle owners? Well, the missing readers, 18-35 year olds, are the single largest group of gamers; not only do they spend tons of money on games, they spend *time* gaming. Between TV/videos, gaming, and having a life there isn’t much time to them for reading. Or look at the demographics of comic shops. Precious few kids and what few show up are brought in by parents. Book clubs? They hardly advertise anymore and their prices are hardly competitive. Worse, their greatest innovation in the last decades is to let you reply to their mailings online. At the current rate, they might notice ebooks exist some time ’round the middle of the century.
Solutions?
Some of the problems are societal (school curriculuums based on 19th century reading lists; Twain and Stephenson and Dickens are great but how about something a bit more contemporary and accessible? Characters kids can identify with, situations they can recognize, stories that entertain instead of proselitize?) and some are industry specific; the gatekeepers and “masters” of publishing are still operating on a top down “manna from the heavens” promotion-free marketing model that barely takes note of modern technology; their idea of modern marketting is to take their top 5 authors on talk-show tours. How 60′s!
Not an easy row to hoe.
Little wonder ebooks are only marketed to dedicated readers; its easier to fight over an existing customer base than to create new customers.
I will posit that not even blister-packed $50 readers will do much to improve the total size of the industry until publishers get off their butts and start promoting entertainment reading with the full range of modern tools they are currently so shamefully neglecting.
That is why I believe that focusing on recreational readers is a flawed ebook strategy that neglects the *real* goldmine markets of etextbooks and corporate document management; those markets are not fragmented, they are not low-margin businesses, nor are they as price sensitive as the mainstream (read:casual) recreational reader. And mining those markets will ramp up the technology to where reader gadgets can begin to exploit its potential while driving costs down for everybody. (History lesson: PCs, cellphones)
Supporting and promoting ebooks on cellphones (not even Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone ads bother to mention ebook apps, do they?), portable gaming devices, DAPs, and pretty much anything with a screen is a good start but just a start. Focusing on the content (the otherwise commendable concept of free online digital libraries as well as properly priced, readily available commercial books, magazines, and newspapers) or the delivery vehicles (reader hardware and/or software) does nothing to increase the customer base for books, whether digital or treeware; all it does is transition it from one delivery mechanism to another. Which is a desirable goal unto itself (for ecological reasons if nothing else) but way short of the true potential of the technology.
More than promoting ebooks as a technology what is needed is to promote books and reading.
For starters, the lazy-ass publishers could try that 15-year old invention called web advertising…
(Rumor has it it actually can be used to draw in a new customer or two…)