Just something to think about. What if the publishers and the larger book sellers already know that the ebook tipping point won’t happen until their books cost $3. But they also know that they are in a time that they can continue to milk ebook buyers for $10 an ebook as the novelty of e-readers remains fresh and there is still security through obscurity. The average e-book owner hasn’t really seen where books can be acquired outside the normal channels.
But they will. Because when all the college students start sporting tablets and readers, and when the little kids have them, they simply will not tolerate NOT being able to share and educate. And when sharing is easier than buying, you will see a spike in sharing. Also if purchasing is too restrictive, then people will find alternatives. The interesting part of the story are the people who aren’t buying the e-readers, not the people who are. The potential for ebook sales is frightening. The key is waiting to be turned. And that key is $2.99.
Publishers are people too. Sure some of them are deluded, but most of them have mortgages and kids and are just average people that don’t like to pay for things. And they probably know they will have to decide when the golden days of $10 ebooks are over and volume is the new plan.
Books can be impulse buys, but only when they are cheap. If I was giving an ebook reader to a family member as a gift, I’m paying quite a bit of money for that present. To get the recipient of the ground so to speak, I may load some public domain classics on the reader, but that’s all. They are on their own after that. Now if ebooks were priced closer to their mainstream perceived worth then you’d have people buying five or ten popular ebooks along with the device. At $9.99, I might buy one ebook as a gift. The question is, does the publisher want me spending $10 or $30 on the transaction that requires no extra leg work for them? (Nearly free digital distribution works this way.) I’ll spend more to get a bundle of titles. Because I know that my wife or daughter isn’t going to like some things, and you know maybe I’ll get a book for me or the rest of the family on there, it’s just a couple bucks. Aha! A new value proposition emerges.
I know some people would read this and be shocked that I’d propose a best seller should be priced at $2.99. I’ll go further. I think a best seller should be $1.79. Why? Because it will be sold in massive quantities, downloaded faster than a music file and will contain ads to pay the author and publisher even more. Any author moving a lot of media is a target for sponsors ready to piggyback. Ads work in books where they wouldn’t work in music. And trust me on this, you might hear people saying they won’t stand for ads in their books, but I assure you they will tolerate them just fine.
Here’s to hope that we see the new economy of ebooks get rational so we can see it take off into something interesting. Or the publishers could try to hold their current pricing models for a few more years, and see where that leads.
I don’t know why I keep seeing these articles feigning shock, or those that question the new philosophy or acceptance of putting ads in books. Of course ebooks will have ads. It’s been done for over a hundred years in books and it might even bring prices down, or to zero. And it will also not be all that problematic for many of us. Some of us won’t mind and the rest of us know where there are ads, there are ad blockers. And the more sophisticated advertising gets, the easier it will be to block.
Let me state what I mean. In order to help pay me, a struggling author, more, I can get an ad contract from a company. I make the deal, get the sponsorship money, put the ads in as part of the book maybe in the margins, maybe as a footer message on ever chapter front page, and a few pages at the back (just like every high school sports tournament book you’ve ever seen). This set of ads comes as part of the text, doesn’t change, isn’t all that intrusive and has that home grown feeling. Those who bought my book don’t get too bothered, and at some level connect with it. I’m probably even thanking my advertisers in the preface. The ads are absorbed or ignores as advertising goes. In the end, it doesn’t effect public opinion of my book.
Then you have the latest massive best seller, the head of the long tail. It is published under Big Pub, with ads from Big Pharma, Big Oil, etc. The ads are ever changing, they of course have to stand out, they deploy overlays, begging you to ‘touch’ them. You know, anything to catch your eye, because who gives a damn that you’re reading or what you’re reading.
Then something happens. It begins with some frustration a few blog posts, some bad press about a popular book. People expressing distaste. Then plugins start coming out designed to disable these ads, hosted at a snarky website that you can download instantly. Because the Big Pub ad code is standardized by the partner of Big Pub it just takes a few strokes of code and the dynamic ever-changing ads are routed by the blocker plugins to fizzle out, to turn invisible or are auto-overlayed, display:none whatever technique needed.
How am I able to forecast this? Because I know of the existence of greed. Greed causes people to act irrationally, to force their desires on others. And where one strong emotion like greed is born, on the other side of the universe, there is born the anti-matter of said emotion. The balancing force. Whitehat hackers, or just industrious people who have had enough. They have the distaste for greed. And they will focus their weekend spare time on blocking the bigger annoying ad networks because THEY CHOOSE TO. Because where there are vampires, you need vampire hunters.
While this goes on, others will be distributing the open versions of those texts more readily. And where the ads get too ridiculous, the rational, freedom lovers, commonists, and people who just miss the good ole days, will rally against the greed. And like DRM has in some parts of the spectrum has been beaten down, so will the wrong kinds of ads.
But ads are OK. And they will be OK, until they are NOT OK. And you’ll all know when that happens if you are paying attention. So stop acting so surprised about it. Books are predominantly niche products and many are written by intelligent people who care about their outcome. Which means there’s a chance that you actually will read books with ads you kinda like. Because the author had some say about it. I wouldn’t bet my farm on it, but I’m optimistic.
The Kindle is less interesting than a tablet. But it has some very good points to it. Convenience is one, the connection right to the Amazon store is something some people like. It’s light and has a sharp reflective screen that can be read inside or outdoors. On the flipside, though it’s slow and it doesn’t do media or animation. The iPad, which is selling a lot more units per second than the Kindle these days is more useful to people because it gives them abilities to surf, game, and create. Thousands of apps add to it’s feature list. It appeals to young and old. It’s a device you can experiment with, you can add onto it. The 6″ Kindle is half the price of the iPad, but the big Kindle DX is the same price $500 as the lowest iPad with the same size screens. Someone ready to buy either one has to answer the question would they rather read in bright sunlight on something like a paper page, or get something with a lot more sizzle, that you can play with, watch video and produce content too?
The point I’ m making is that if people essentially don’t care about the e-paper screen or the sunlight issue, the iPad makes a lot more sense. You can buy the same books, you’ll get a better view of the photos in color. You can quickly get out of that book and switch tasks in an instant. You can consume AND create. Sure the iPad’s LCD will probably strain your eyes faster, but it might also fill a couple niches in your life. Tablets like the iPad can be the perfect living room device for sharing and playing. (Damnit no camera on this thing?)
So if you were Amazon and you want to continue to sell more Kindles, you need to raise its appeal. Seth Godin wrote today for his Kindle friends that they should get the Kindle priced down to $49.00 and increase the attractiveness of buying ebooks with book-of-the-month club purchases. He added that corporations should be able to buy them for hundreds of their employees and be able to push their own content such as technical manuals or maybe annual reports to everyone in the company. Godin’s ideas make a lot of sense. And if the prices were right, you can turn more people into Kindle users if you can make the ebooks more attractive too.
I have one solution for Amazon that might make a biggest difference though. Amazon really needs to take a very close look at Valve’s Steam store and copy the hell out of it. Steam is a website for downloading PC games (Macs now too). Games are like first cousins to ebooks, both are digital content of an unlimited supply. If you have a desire to play a new game, much like you might feel a desire to read a new book, you can go to Steam and see latest best sellers. But something really obvious on the Steam store are nice shiny buttons to take you to games under $10 and under $5. Something for everyone.
The next great thing Steam has is sales on games on one particular day a week or over a weekend. If you’re visiting the site frequently and paying attention, you can grab a $40 game for $20 for example. Lastly, you can buy packs of games under certain publishers for big discounts too. Valve, the creators of the Steampowered store sell the complete Valve pack. Close to 20 Valve games. Buy the pack, you save a $100. Actually you’re saving a lot more because many of the games are well below their original retail price already. The Valve pack at $99 is enough gameplay online and off to keep you busy for a while. It’s instantly downloadable content too. And you can download it to different locations.
This is the trifecta. This makes Steam a very attractive place to shop for games. Books are a little different yes, and it will take a lot of work with the publishers, but it’s the only forward looking move that you can make with ebooks right now. Amazon has the publisher partnerships, something that Valve had to work really hard to do. Amazon has the advantage of a lot more book titles than games. Publisher book packs could be in many different flavors of collections. For example Penguin Books, who just finally came to an agreement with Amazon on their best seller prices could sell best sellers as a discounted pack of ebooks, or packs under a certain topic, such as a technical area of expertise and make these collections accessible and affordable. Not only that, but publisher packs also help the reader identify the publisher. Readers might look forward to the next Penguin or Wiley book because that pack they bought last time had all the good stuff.
Think how powerful it would be if Amazon could just layout prices of new books at discounts where you really feel fortunate as a Kindle owner. Say 6 months after a hardback book is released, Amazon could have a 24 hour sale on the book pricing it $5.99 rather than $9.99. It’s still a new book and because it’s a one day only, and perhaps a never repeated sale, the lower price doesn’t devalue the normal price or the physical book price. Anyone who missed out, too bad, but it would be consoling to know another sale will come soon enough and they just need to check back often. Sales can be promoted through all kinds of social channels too. Ebook sales are easy. The supply is unlimited. If nobody buys, who cares! Everything that happens or doesn’t happen is a valuable and instant learning opportunity.
Right now on the web page for the Kindle store, they don’t have a bargain bin, though they do have some cheaper books. Finding ebooks at $7.99 and even $2.49 didn’t take long. But it’s not presented in a way that’s good for impulses like a retail store is. If you look at the best sellers category for example, they actually think crossing out the other price is a good way to make the Kindle price look better. Look at the price(s) for the top left book in the photo below. Oops! Funny thing is, I’ve hardly ever buy a book at list price. Do they even use the list price at Borders or Barnes and Noble? Seems like all new books there have a discounted sticker of at least 10%. Amazon fails to entice me with this overused cross-out original price tactic. I’ve never bought a book at full price at Amazon. If that’s what they sold them for, I doubt I would shop there as often.
Next we have a page with best sellers in the Kindle Store. 2 columns. Top 100 paid, and Top 100 Free. Once again we have a problem. The good news for consumers. About 10% of these top 100 were priced under $5. The bad news for Amazon, you have to pay attention to see that. Why don’t they just have the $5 or even the $2.50 category?
I love a top 100 free category, but if they have the free column, there’s no reason not to have top 100 under $5.
Multiple surveys I’ve seen have indicated that people think a reasonable price for an ebook is $5 and under. Why is this category not here and promoted on the front page of the Kindle store? If it was, anyone getting a Kindle will at least know, hey this is cool and there are a bunch of books for only a couple dollars. They know they’ll have plenty to read, they also know they might be rewarded for paying attention to discount days.
Publishers need to get it through their heads, Unlimited supply changes things. They need to help these e-reader stores become attractive through book pricing and big 50% and 75% off sales. And they need to start yesterday. If they’d rather wait, they might as well choose to not do ebooks and face the consequences of being paper only. Ebooks fit the model of selling more at a lesser price. Publisher have repeatedly said that the cost of printed books is negligible, but this is the biggest lie. Because it’s not just printing. It’s shipping, it’s employee and warehouse handling, inventory, real estate, insurance, etc. Ebooks eliminate much of this and allow for more affiliate marketing opportunities.
Looks like a Courier will come to life after all. Well not really. It’s not the Microsoft Courier project recently shelved, it’s actually much larger dual-screen tablet based on a custom Linux variant. The Kno is a lovely and very large tablet device created for reading text books and taking notes. It’s screens are bigger than all tablets and e-readers currently available or in the works. The size of the Kno screens, 14 inches! The creators say that the reason for this large form is so it replicates the students textbook experiences in size, but their aim is to revolutionize learning with it’s functionality. With current technology, it looks to be a heavy device, but that doesn’t mean it would put off students carrying book bags already anyway. The Kno was announced yesterday at the AllThingsDigital conference. CNET was there covering the event and posted Youtube videos talking with the Kno company founders Babur Habib and Osman Rashid which are embedded at the end of this article.
The Kno exists in a working prototype form at this point. It runs embedded Linux with a custom browser-based operating system centered around reading, notetaking and organizing clips of information much like the Microsoft Courier project appeared to specialize in. The Kno interface looks spacious, custom designed and visually organized though the prototype had a few input response issues. Kno is currently posting jobs for several development areas to refine the device and OS. They have partnered with major publishers and expect that rather than having a dedicated app store, apps written for the device will come from many places including the educational institutions, publishers and the students themselves.
According to the Kno website, to develop the device they created a student panel to understand how to build it for their needs. And they observed the way people study to create how the user interface behaves and organizes things. There are a few student reaction videos on the site as well, spoken in a way as if these students already use it, but the device isn’t available yet. Rashid said that they will have their pre-order system in place for this fall with the tablets ready by the holidays.
Things we like:
The large size serves a clear purpose. It has a clear target student market and a custom embedded OS, which means the processing requirements and power consumption could potentially be lower and the startup could be faster.
The blue alternating hinges are a nice fixture
The form is sleek and original
Touchscreen supporting a stylus gives it drawing and sketching potential.
Linux Kernel and a custom interface might break new ground for the future of tablets. Every little bit helps.
Supports Flash Player for video and animations – very useful considering the content on many online course sites include flash components and media.
TheBookSeller.com reports that JK Rowling has seen the light and will allow selling of her Harry Potter series digitally. Whew good thing, finally people might eventually get HarryPotter as an ebook.
Small problem. Fans have already typed out all the books and made PDFs, ePubs and text downloads long ago. Had this been available earlier from the publisher(s), there would have been sales to take advantage of at the time. But customers have been lost.
There was an interesting point made in the article. To create a book experience unique to the franchise, it’s gotta be more than text, wouldn’t you think? There’s an entire theme park built around Harry Potter as well as the movies. It’s almost embarrassing if they didn’t dig a little deeper for the ebook version. The question was, for this book to be successful, does one partner with a publisher, animation studio, app developer or what?
Good question. If you try to make apps, you’ll be making more than one for the various devices, iPad, Android, Flash / Adobe AIR etc. If you want to reach the e-reader market, you won’t really be able to have anything but text. If somebody buys one, will they get access to all? Will one be cheaper than another? Will there be a discount over the whole set? Will it be affordable, or is it better to just pick up a used copy somewhere, since there are thousands of those everywhere. Everytime I go to the thrift store, they have Harry Potter books. Plus if you have the DVDs, where does an enhanced book fit in? Might it be a lot of work just for something gimmicky? And when it comes to sales, does that matter? Will e-books have anything to give to collectors? A gold CD or something? Or how about a dedicated Harry Potter tablet? That could actually work given the popularity of this franchise.
In a New York Times article today, they ask if book covers still matter in the age of the ebook?
I assumed they would be talking about attractive graphical content on online store views and whether or not attractive graphics still matter to sell books. Of course they do. In fact, book cover graphics matter even more, because you need to capture attention within these online stores often with just a thumbnail. Attractiveness in products always matters.
They brought up an interesting point, it’s more difficult or not possible to know what someone is reading in public. So if you are a curious people-watcher like most of us, you won’t have a visible book cover to read from if somebody is entranced in their ebook. They are staring at a screen and all you can see is the device. Of course you can always just ask somebody “what are you reading?” or any of the hundred other icebreaking conversation starters and eventually find out what good book might be out there waiting for you.
But both with an ebook and a printed book, of course that person could certainly tell you to buzz off. Just because somebody’s book cover is visible doesn’t mean they are looking for new like-minded friends or asking to be interrupted. The point was though that a person in public is no longer free advertising for books.
Here’s what I didn’t read in there. We have a fantastic replacement for this book covers in public problem. People have been giving away their “What I’m reading right now” status on their blogs, and on their “slice” of the social websites they belong. Sometimes they do this manually, sometimes automatic. And here’s the big thing. The reader devices can transmit this information to share it. If you open a new book, it might ask you, “Would you like your friends to know you are reading this?”
And if you say yes, it can publish it to twitter, Facebook or your blog ALONG with embedding the thumbnail and links to the store. If you’re smart, it will be your store affiliate link so if your friend or a stranger clicks and buys from there, you can get a cut. If that same transaction happened because of an encounter on a bus bench, you’d never get anything. Plus as these devices are more popular, there could easily be an app running that can transmit and receive (anonymously and by opt-in only) what people around you are reading. You don’t even have to ask. Problem solved… BIG problem solved.
Back to graphics now. In order to win a lot of sales in the ebook market, having author and publisher power will matter, but so will having great supplements, animations, videos, and a microsite. Anything that will pull a potential reader into the story just like and better than a cover graphic would. If it’s a Freakonomics or a Columbine kind of book, you can expect, at least for the interactive versions, to see animated graphs, emotional movie-style trailers and a lot of humor. These things like video trailers and commercials existed already for some books, but you’re going to see a lot more. Many books will have an interactive team behind them, along with the editing and proofing and sales teams that publishers currently have.
My advice to authors, keep your eyes open for a technical agent e.g. somebody with a website / SEO / SEM background, because your books will need to surf the social channels and exploiting all of them the best way you can.
A panel of distinguished guests discuss the technology and use of Readers, e-books etc. It has many good insights. They cover pretty much what the prosumer, the publishers, and the futurists are all thinking.
Some interesting points of several of the panelists. Not that I agree with all of it. But it’s a good insight into some industry heads and spokespeople.
My favorite points:
The Kindle is not going to last, according to several in the panel.
User testing show that people prefer a nice paginated interface with beautiful reflowable text (not scrolling, pagination)
Competition with Amazon is a good thing.
Reading on the iPhone or Mobile device is a win for many because you don’t have to make a separate decision to take that device with you like you would with another larger device.
Amazon underpriced E-Books to help standardize their device. This is an ignorant point, they underpriced E-Books? Sorry, people have stated repeatedly, the “golden price” for Ebooks is more in the $5 range, not $9.99. A book download costs virtually nothing. These prices are fixed.
The group can’t seem to clarify what advertising could be, or at least they didn’t discuss specifics. How it can be done is obvious, the challenge is just pricing it.
In the future, books will all be crowd sourced from within smaller communities. No more will it be the lone hermit author who disappears for a year and returns with a finished book.
Contrary to what you might have heard, the amount of book sales that are actually down? 3% That’s it. And that 3% picked up from the sales of Ebooks. Ebooks picked up the slack.
Now is the time to buy newspaper and magazine companies, says the investment banker. =)
Traditional media companies are not good at product development
Payment systems don’t seem to be clear with people without a micro payment system.
A smart move is to focus on community and collaboration.
Purchasing a short story is now convenient – bought like a song. These forms are financially feasible. Certain long form articles too. People will pay for what they want.
In 3 years the ownership of smart phones will exceed the install base of PCs
What I don’t like about this discussion was there was no talk of specific gadgets except for the iPhone and the iPad, oh and the Kindle. They acknowledged a rush of new devices, but don’t seem to be paying attention to the ecosystem. They didn’t go into specifics of unique possibilities on enhanced books. Books with Video clips is as far as they went. Is that all people can see? A book page with an embedded video? And how they might be developed. Nothing about self-publishing either, other than the positive comment on short story writers.
These are great times for experts to get specialty books out to SO MANY more people and to gain the most per unit that authors ever had, because they can charge what they like and distribute using simple ecommerce. A small team could create the book and enhance it, giving it a more attractive position over a publishers book.
