In this quarter the call for an e-book chart is particularly strong as Booksellers attempt to reflect on their Christmas sales. Currently the industry knows that print sales have declined 30% for the past three years at Christmas. This is somewhat alleviated by Christmas day now being a day to sell books with ebook sales increasing by 350% in 2011. Another factor on reduced profits is the tax on ebooks. Hopefully something that should be removed in 2012 as gaming and physical books are not taxed. It also seems particularly unfair as Amazon avoids this taxation due to being based in Luxemburg, giving it yet another advantage.
The role of the publisher continues to be discussed; they suggestions that ‘e-books are not created after two minutes ticking boxes on Amazons self-publishing program.’ The key issue that they are discussing is that of discoverability however. As the majority of sales are from within the top 1000 ebooks. Penguin is tackling this by heavily branding everything in the hopes that a strong brand will overcome these issues. Berlucchi however believes that social media will provide the serendipitous discovery that Amazon logarithms don’t. Publishers are trying to get into the charts by changing the prices on their digital books. Selling them cheap to get in and then upping the price again. Another issue is that digital descriptions simply don’t get updated, for example several books can be listed as the ‘latest’ by an author leaving everyone confused. Some publishers are seizing the digital advantage, using it to publish smaller ‘bite-sized’ chunks of larger books or to allow them to publish smaller work that isn’t viable to print. All of which coincides with a prediction that most publishers are moving towards a print on demand approach reflecting digitals more reactive publishing style.
With all but 4 of the top 20 publishers seeing a decline in book sales the ‘flood’ of self-published novels, is creating fears that their low rrps will drag down the market. There are also predictions that by next year as much as a quarter of fiction ebook sales could be from self-publishing. This is leading to self-publishers getting a lot of attention this quarter with some even making a lot of money. However these self-published authors still see the ‘traditional’ deal as their aim, partly no doubt as there are much better royalties! They also still see having a physical book as a big mark of respect.
There is a flurry of activity in the Academic sector of publishing this quarter. This is due to a number of factors. Firstly the hike in fees come September has led some universities to cut out the booksellers and buy direct from publishers in order to offer books as part of the course. Except for the Yale University Press overall this sector of the market is loosing sales due to digital advances. With one survey finding that a third of students weren’t interested in physical books. There’s also a new trend for ‘shadow digital libraries’ in foreign countries with new universities. All of which is making it a rocky looking area for Kobo to base its launch on however as the UK’s only open platform it may be successful where the others are not.
Libraries continue to take a battering as Penguin stops lending to public libraries. Harper and Collins offer a pretty terrible deal, requiring a new payment every 26th time an ebook is borrowed. In terms of school libraries they are expressing a lot of interest in ebooks but have yet to really find a use for them. Other than that the importance of libraries continues to be emphasised. One concern being that their disappearance spells the end for some authors who are almost only borrowed not bought.
In this quarter iBooks author is launched but content is only to be sold through Apples ibook store if you use it. Leading some publishers such as Editions to refuse to publish on ibooks. Most people are still keen to publish via apps, however the majority of tham still don’t make any money. Often they are a lite version or simply a marketing tool for a print book. Yudu however are making money through ‘container’ apps, basically the app is free but you buy extra content within it. In terms of the other digital giant Amazon continues to be as dodgy as ever. Interestingly despite owning most of the market, books are no longer Amazons main revenue stream, which says a great deal about the size of the operation. There is a long article about its move to Luxemburg and the subsequent investigation for tax evasion.
Independent Booksellers continue to have a tough time with dire predictions that 40% of high street shops are predicted to close in the next 5 years. Some believe that bookshops need to act like the cinema as an outlet for new releases. However realistic that may be the main problem that they face for 2012 is how they can sell ebooks. This is in someway being tackled as the Booksellers Association is in talks about this, however there is no indication of what a solution would be.
The children’s book sector appears resilient in a digital age. This is partly down to parents being reluctant to give expensive tablets to children. Leading many publishers to sit waiting for the second hand market to get going. Furthermore parents see physical books as a healthy non-screen based option for kids. Design wise difficulties with epublishing in colour are also partly to blame for its slow transition. However Parragon who primarily publish illustrated books feel that Epub3 will be a ‘game changer.’ There’s also a lot of good children’s digital books out there with books like ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ offering a good example of how a story can expand into each creative angle.
In terms of design, opinion on the role of physical books continues in the same vein as previous quarters. There is a feeling that they should be made of high quality materials. Also traditional letterpress styles continue to flourish, reflected in the retro style being promoted again by Penguin. The hybrid format is gaining momentum, with most publishers determined to publish simultaneously across platforms. Of particular interest in digital design was Richard Dawkins from Somethin’ Else who wants to make the interface disappear, no fake page turns for example. For me thinkers like this seem likely to be the future of digital book design. A final interesting point I wanted to slip in somewhere was the travel genres progress into digital. They are finding print is still going strong mostly due to the large roaming charges from mobile phone companies that make apps unaffordable for holiday goers.
Overall with this quarter we can see that there is no guarantee that all genres will move digitally at the same pace. Publishers need to keep experimenting with the price and design of their digital products. However as digital offers so much more freedom to do this I’m optimistic that there will be a lot of interesting books coming through over 2012.
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