Publishers Weekly reported on the third annual Canadian Booksellers Association National Conference. On the ebook presentations they said:
Both presentations on e-book innovations came from Canadian companies. As announced just before the conference, Quebec-based Transcontinental Printing is now offering English Canadian bookstores access to an e-book distribution system that Transcontinental has already been using for clients in France, Italy and Quebec for a couple of years. The system will enable bookstores to sell e-books in Transcontinental’s digital warehouse via their own websites, and the company was demonstrating how it works at a display table during the conference’s exhibitor showcase on Saturday afternoon.
Calgary-based Enthrill Entertainment offered booksellers a preview look at a project that will officially launch in about six weeks. Co-founder Kevin Franco presented the company’s idea of selling e-books in bricks and mortar stores using cards that replicate the book’s cover and contain an access code that allows the buyer to download a copy of the book to the device of his or her choice. Franco pitched the cards as the tangible element of e-books that has been missing but needed to allow bookstores to participate in e-book sales. Enthrill is just beginning a market evaluation process, making cards for a limited number of titles in a variety of genres available in 100 to 150 stores to test the waters of what type of books sell best in this format. The cards would allow bookstores that don’t even have their own website to sell e-books.
More info in the article. Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the link.
I concocted a similar idea years ago, to allow authors to promote their ebooks at physical venues (like conferences and conventions). There’s no reason they couldn’t be sold (or given away) at bookstores as well. I think this is an idea that all bookstores–especially those who fear erosion of their business through ebooks–should embrace, as one way to participate in the ebook market, and possibly to save their storefronts.
If a bricks and mortar bookstore has a stack of physical cards, each with a different download code, for a current best selling novel, then that bookstore can sell the cards to customers for whatever price they may choose. They could even hand out the cards for free as a loss leader if they wanted to.
I don’t see how any publisher could enforce “agency pricing” with this system.