Evan Schnittman, Bloomsbury: ebooks as a market share in immersive, narrative format will get a huge share. But in other formats where pictures and pedagogic tools are paramount ebooks have a small percentage and now indication yet is that it will get bigger. On pricing, still have to pay authors and so the cost of content still has to be maintained. Will see a bifurcation as authors work towards the decision point between self-publishing and going with a publisher. Publishers will maintain their price structures. Found that customers are not terribly interested in enhanced ebooks. Four mouths to feed: author, agent, publisher and now the aggregator. Seeing agents and retailers venturing into publishing, publishers going around agents, etc. Old marketplace was based on the “fact” that there was a life cycle for a book. Now that the book is “evergreen” this changes the entire marketplace. Scale helps you make a book a work, but also effects you in a negative way when it comes to fast movement. Publishers who have distribution centers will have problems in the next few years. With apps there is a tremendous cost in development and the marketplace is full on 99 cents and free apps and not sure it scales in the long term. Large scale is the only way can make any money with advertising. Very supportive of libraries. Cloud solutions will eliminate what most people consider DRM and will eliminate 90% of casual piracy. The other 10% which is “organized” piracy should be addressed. Consumers shouldn’t be published. Everything about reading is a private experience and sees social reading as the tail dragging the dog. In four years all the big publishers will be there, but maybe all part of each other.
Dominique Raccah, SourceBooks: if look at quarter 1 2011 Bookscan numbers, adult non-fiction is 42% of books sold and kids 25% of books sold. Big question is how to transform these to ebooks and this type of reading does not translate well to ebooks. Pricing is a key determinant in ebooks. Supply will overwhelm demand and will see average ebook prices will continue to decline. Important to differentiate between books and other media. Book isn’t like a music track, it is more like an album. Pricing will constrain the infrastructure to produce and maintain ebooks and don’t know what will happen with this in the future. Have not seen a lot of take-up on picture books in ebook or enhanced ebook space. One of earliest adopters of enhanced ebooks and surprised at how poor the customers’ reaction and take-up is. Still haven’t found a good methodology for enhanced ebooks. Customers are not interested. For Sourcebooks, as an independent publisher, nothing has changed. Have always been POD and self-published books in his area. In this market it is now better to be mid-sized, rather than big or small. Mid-sized players are doing better than the other groups. This is backed up by the data. Big fan of apps and apps will be the transformation for non-fiction. Apps are different from an “enhanced” book. It should be a whole new experience. Not working with ads in books, but it is clear that they will need to be working with them in the future. Libraries are a great discovery point. Data is really mixed on piracy and so don’t have a point of view on it yet. Experimenting currently and results are mixed. Will loose 50% of publishers in the next 4 years.
Richard Nash, Red Lemonade: industry is so dynamic that numbers will change dramatically and numbers projections, today, are probably fairly meaningless. On pricing, it is convenience, community and context that will support higher prices, all other “simple” ebook prices will drop. Enhanced ebooks are a publisher-driven method to keep prices up and customers aren’t interested. Two fixed points in the universe, the author and the reader, and everything else is up for grabs. Don’t know where the game of musical chairs will end, perhaps it never will. Shifting from a value chain into a value network. One of problems seen with larger entities in this space is that when they have attempted to scale they tend to build their own machines rather than use open source and this will be a problem for them in the future. To early to know if apps will work. Apps compete with free websites and it is not certain that they can compete. Ads are a terrible way to monetize the communities I am playing in. Books and ads are competing in my space. Libraries should become community center for the 18 million people who identify themselves as writers. Copyright in its present form will not survive for very long and to base strategies on it is futile. Should be focused on “unhackable” value. 50% shrinkage in publishers but format of shrinkage is too variable to know how they will shrink.
