The uproar over ebook prices

Much has been said about ebook pricing, particularly in recent times as Amazon is forced to move to agency pricing.  And haven't their customers revolted!  Not surprisingly - we've all been getting books at ridiculous prices.  Why would we buy hardcovers or paperbacks when they are several times the price of the ebook.  Fine, if you are like me and you want the printed work as the PREMIUM product, something to share, something to keep, something to treasure - and not a digital file!  But the US 9.99 price point did create demand.  Amazing demand.  Even at 11.99, 12.99, 14.99 the price points are still good.  Where is the balance? 

I must say ebook pricing is getting ridiculous.  The US Sony Store has Tony Blair's My Journey still available for US 9.99.  What is absolutely ridiculous however is local pricing.  Local site Readwithoutpaper.com has the book for $35.58 - that's what the local distributor has set the price at.  AU $35.58.  On the Random House Australia website the Hardback is $59.95.  The ebook is also $59.95.  Sorry guys, you know I love you but where do you think I ordered the book from?  (Yes I know, I usually order from work at staff rates but when it comes to ebooks it's a different kettle of fish).

To make matters even more confusing, ebook vendors aren't familiar with how bibliographic data works.  For all of us in the booktrade, we've had to sigh, heave, yell, scream, moan and groan over what the metadata looks like.  We've worked through 100s editions and versions of the Harry Potters and Dan Browns of this world.  It is confusing.  It's awful.  And now you're yet another victim of it.  On today's Sony newsletter I saw a book entitled Cleopatra.  For those of you that know me, I have several grand loves.  Tudor History, War of the Roses, lives of famous poets and painters, and Ancient History - particularly Egyptian.  The first thing I do is link on the title and what happens when I get into the Sony Reader Store - two different prices for the same bloody ebook. It's an EBOOK people - it's not a hardcover or a paperback.  There should be one price UNLESS the book specifically mentions an enhanced edition.  And on old Sony readers, an enhanced edition doesn't do anything.  It's an electronic reader only. 

This is just going to get worse folks.  It's bad enough having "e" and "p" prices all over the place, locally and internationally.  More mature ebook markets like the US doing crazy things, the UK market having a play, and then us not wanting to cannibilise print in any way.  it's going to happen.  The consumer will decide how they want to read.  We've seen it in the library market for years.  Library budgets for print massively cut back so they can purchase more ebooks, online databases and journals.  We've HAD to work with ebook vendors to survive.  And it does come with a cost.  Economically you operate with different margins - or not at all.

When will publishers start looking at price points, look at the readers, look at the business models, and find something that helps SELL the work - regardless of format.  Give the reader what they want - at a price suitable for the product offered.  Or lose the sale.

In industry alerts today there was an upcry when Amazon started listing the publishers ebook prices in the UK.  "Increase in piracy" "people will go elsewhere" "ban the agency publishers".  The peasants are revolting folks.  But publishers, you've only got yourselves to blame.  You got out the content to the market, played with the big boys, let them build up the demand (and where demand had never gone before!) at a price point soo unbelievable it became mainstream, then said sorry and clawed it all back. 

Personally I think the price points are way too high locally - but that goes for the printed product too.  I've been in this industry a long time and I've seen the picture from all sides.  But price it better and sell more.  Be prepared to play, be prepared to give up margin, but don't lose the sale.  Don't become irrelevant.  Adapt or die.

Oh, and try not to piss off the customer.  In the digital world, they have more power than you know.

In the year of the ebook, what counts and what doesn't....?

I'm writing this blog from the Frankfurt Book Fair.  If you are keeping up-to-date with the press coverage from Frankfurt, it's the "year of the ebook", it's all about the digital marketplace, ebook here, ebook there, ebook everywhere.  Yet for those of us who speak fluent "e" it's quite amusing.  We've spoken ebooks for years.  But it seems ebook sales in libraries don't count.  Ebooks through publisher databases and web portals don't count.  Most of my meetings with academic publishers now report on "p" vs "e" sales and the figures are quite interesting, depending on the depth of the "e" range offered to library ebook vendors, how long they've been active players in the ebook market, pricing of the books and simultaneous release.  Some STM publishers are sitting above 60% "e" sales, however the majority probably sits around 30% and growing at double - or triple - digit figures.  To hear it's the year of the ebook is funny for those of us in library supply.  Because we don't count.

On the library front, the major ebook players are well established - EBL, ebrary, Netlibrary, myilibrary.  How do they feel when they hear about the year of the ebook? Some of them have played in this ebook domain for over a decade.  Their sales are not insignificant.  But they don't count.  They've worked on content acquisition with academic, professional and scholarly publishers for many years.  It must be nice after being in the marketplace for over a decade, in some instances, to hear you are now in the spotlight.  But it's not them that are in the spotlight.  No, No, No.

You see it's all about the trade.  It's about booksellers and how they fit into the equation.  Not the giants - like Amazon (with the Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (with the Nook).  It's about getting fiction and non-fiction titles to the general consumer through other players.  Google Editions will be huge with retailers.  Kobo is growing their marketshare here with the Red Group.  Blio has launched in the US and will come to ANZ next year. Independent booksellers - large and small - can play in the ebook arena as long as they have a website.

But again, we're forgetting there are other players providing back-end service to booksellers - OverDrive, Ebooks Corporation, Gardners in the UK.  The latter advised they have over 100 publishers and 100,000 ebooks in their offer to retailers. They've worked at their strategies for years.  Nice to know their time has come!  I'm sure they count.  Because they supply to the wider book trade.

But let's extend the ramble.  There is one really hot topic in all the noise regarding ebooks.  And it's also to do with counting.  However in this case, it may be counting the loss.  TERRITORIAL RIGHTS FOR EBOOKS.... 

It came up in many of my meetings with publishers with regards to book distribution - not library ebook vendors.  If you are distributing the print product, particularly in the academic and scholarly arena, you have seen library supplier sales change.  Library suppliers work with ebook vendors who provide services that work with a library management system.  Many sales are the "one-sies and two-sies" across an entire range.  Overall it makes an impact to your business.  But library supply, at say 10% of sales, is small.  It's TRADE distribution that's going to hurt. 

Publishers being wowed by ebook vendor arrangements for booksellers - particularly Kobo, Blio and Google Editions - are not always thinking about their agent or distributor on the ground in Australasia.  They are not thinking about cannibilisation of print.  They aren't thinking about inventory, publicity, sales and marketing.  All important roles of the agent.  They aren't always thinking about communications to their sales agents and distributors about the possible effects.  They are going directly to the retailer via the ebook wholesaler - bypassing the normal and traditional book supply chain.

I've discussed it before on this blog, but in the year of the ebook (in the trade, that is, not libraries!), how are we going to carve up the ebook pie.  There isn't enough to go around.  The role of the sales agent/distributor is going to change.  And substantially change. Wholesale terms cannot be applied to both the distributor AND the ebook wholesaler (the Blio's, Kobos etc).  The ebook wholesalers have their terms.  For a distributor, a revenue or commission stream is all that one can really hope for.  How is the publisher going to account for that, what will the percentage look like, and will it be enough to sustain the supply chain we've known and loved all these years (yes, that was sarcasm in case you missed it). 

Publishers are trying to hold onto world ebook rights because carving up the digital world is not what many want to do.  Distributor roles are changing and substantially.  Publishers need to keep in mind they have a sales and marketing partner in the ANZ region who performs a core role with placement of product, raising profiles of authors, publicity, service etc.  There are costs associated with these services.  Offer the books on the ebook platforms that bypass that arrangement and don't communicate that to your agent.  Priceless.  Yes, that will make it the year of the ebook for sure.  With consumer demand growing for ebooks and print sales constantly under threat, how many distributors will walk away from the print altogether?  Publishers need to think about their established business relationships and partnerships in this territory - and find some way to blend it all together in a way that grows the business and recognises the important role a distributor plays.  Because look at the fine print of your contracts - to sign up with all these players selling directly to the retailer is no doubt a contractual breach.  Publishers overseas need to take a good hard look at the ebook supply chain, work out how they are going to play with the ebook vendor to retailers, what the role of the sales agent/book distributor is in all of that, and how to carve up that pie.  There's a new business model out there.  What it looks like I don't know.  But I do know: we all need to make it work and it has to count for something.

Exactly how is this supposed to work?

In an ever-increasing e-world, what is the role of publisher, distributor, sales agent - when everyone wants a piece of the sale. When you talk to publishers, the industry advice is don't buy the print book without guaranteeing the ebook rights. But Australia's supply chain for ebooks still has a long way to go. We've of course got the ebook vendors - EBL, Ebrary etc - with established distribution models for libraries. And in the case of EBL, Ebooks Corporation provides a wide range of services to publishers as well as fulfilment to individuals wishing to purchase titles. You've got readwithoutpaper.com which is powered by OverDrive, Kobo is making inroads with their exclusive deal to The Red Group, and we've got Blio coming in the months ahead from Baker & Taylor.

At the end of the day, however, the publisher still has to work with multiple vendors to get the digital content out there. So what happens with existing distribution agreements? Traditionally they wouldn't have included any ebook component. It's a physical book, going in and out of a warehouse. Widgets in. Widgets out. But if a press uses a distributor here for their traditional book, and then by-passes them by providing content to the Kobo's, the Blio's, the OverDrive's of this world, what role does the distributor have? Are contracts being updated to get a piece of the ebook pie. Afterall, in many circumstances the distributor or sales agent has done the pre-publication work, the reps have sold into the bricks and mortar stores, there's been marketing, advertising, promotions, publicity. All for the physical book. At the distributor's cost. So if the sale comes through readwithoutpaper, how is the commission or sales percentage being paid to the distributor?

It's a very different scenario if you are a first tier publisher, a local subsidiary, to being a second and third tier distributor. In the case of the latter, your contact in the traditional book supply chain is with the Sales Director, the Operations staff, Service people, marketing people, editorial. Authors. Everyone who's job it is to get the information to you and then the printed book in a timely manner.

But when the publisher or originating source has a Digital Director who's job is to put content in and out of platforms, they don't always have the full picture. They are tasked with the job of ensuring the content goes to as many sources as the company designates are appropriate. I'm assuming they are focusing on just the big guys and it's still a relatively small group. But what's going to happen when it explodes? Will there always be a dozen or so players in the market that has the ebook supply chain sewn up or will every man and his dog get into the act.

At least with book distribution, the supply chain is not very complicated. When you start putting more and more into the ebook mix, the distributor (who has the exclusive rights to all materials published) is not always at the front of their mind. Remember I'm thinking about the second and third tiers here.

What is the model that is working for people? Do the traditional book distributors eventually become just a sales & marketing office for the publishers they represent? Surely when you are speaking "e" that's not going to keep people in business. Everyone wants a cut, and it's the ebook vendors that get the larger slice. If local operators were solely working off a percentage of a percentage, surely that's not a sustainable model. I guess we don't know what percentage will go from p to e - and how soon that will be. And I'm talking the general reader here, not the student. The student expects "e". The library is "e-preferred". And what will happen when the patron driven model in libraries really takes off? What effect will that have on publishers and ebook sales? I'm all for getting collections right and managing budgets, but publishers will want more.

But back to the ebook mix. The existing print distributors want a slice. Ebook Vendors want a bigger slice. Publishers want their mix. And let's not forget the author who created the work. Exactly how profitable do we expect this supply chain to be? A new business model is emerging.

I welcome comments here on the blog as to how this is all working in reality.