By 
print article
Major drum roll from the guys at Amazon.com for their announcement that “Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books (eBooks) than hardcover books.” The group went on to claim that for every 100 hardcover books sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books, and also announced that Stieg Larsson, author of the Millenium Trilogy, has sold one million Kindle books.
The statistics given out by the giant online retailer don’t look quite so amazing when put in proper context. In fact, quite a different story emerges that indicates the traditional publishing business is unprepared to embrace the new dynamics eBooks bring to the market.
Amazon refers to statistics released by The Association of American Publishers that shows eBook sales grew 162.8 percent in May and are up 207.4 percent year-to-date (in the US of course). While the growth stats are impressive, closer scrutiny of the figures provides a good dose of reality.
In the month of May 2010, eBooks had sales in the US to the value of $29.3-million. However, adult hardcopy sales stood at a whopping $138.5-million and adult paperback sales at $110.7-million. Then, add in the $58.1-million for hardcover children’s sales, the $39.9-million for children’s paperback sales, and the $40.1-million for religious books sales. The list goes on.
Tally it all up, and it would put eBooks at $29.3-million vs. printed books at $667.2-million for the month of May in the US of A.
So in a nutshell, printed books still outsell eBooks by a mile and then some in a country with plenty of broadband and an established online shopping culture.
The impressive growth stats seem to stem from a combination of lower prices for eBook reading devices, as well as an increase in publicity around these devices. Publishers Weekly reports sales for the much-anticipated and much-hyped Apple iPad stood at 3.27-million for the period April through June.
If not quite the revolution Amazon’s spin doctors are selling, eBooks are definitely on the rise. Still there does not seem to be much monetary incentive to buy them – a look at local retailer Kalahari.net shows it will cost less to buy Stephenie Meyer’s series of Twilight books in print than in digital format. That even factors in postage! On Amazon you can buy a new paperback copy for $6.05 while the Kindle edition retails for $2 more.
Pricing is set by publishers who are definitely failing to pass on savings in production and distribution costs to retailers, and ultimately to you and me. Surely if you can turn a profit at $6.05 on a printed copy you should be able to turn it on a digital copy, minus the percentage you would have spent on printing and distribution?
It should serve as a warning shot to publishers if their writers are playing with online distribution models by themselves. Author Stephenie Meyer recently released “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella” for free online for the month of June to July 5th. If you missed it, you can still get it for $7.45 for a printed copy or $11.99 for a Kindle copy from Amazon. Spot the bargain if you can.
Publishing’s distribution model is changing, but its business model has yet to catch up.
Follow Manson on Twitter @marklives
Related articles
Topics for this article
| [ advertising enquiries ] |
On the contrary, the statistics DO show massive ebook growth. A completely new market currently only selling to a niche of early adopters, vs an industry that's (call it) 150 years old (if you count “mass production printing” as a starting point).
Paper books' growth is static to marginal increase, ebooks DOUBLING every year? So in 5 years (assuming this doubling does not accelerate, which is unlikely) the ebook market will be roughly as big as traditional.
That's not bad.
Your price comparisons for ebooks versus paperbacks is a little misleading, as are your conclusions. Unless you are in the USA and qualify for free shipping. I picked a Stephanie Meyer book, Breaking Dawn, and compared prices. Kalahari.net sells the book for R96 on special (usual price is R120). Shipping in SA on Kalahari.net is R30 or so for orders under R300 so that brings the price of the paper back to R120. Exclusive Books' price for the same book is R150 off the shelf. These prices work out to roughly $16 and $20 respectively.
On Amazon the paperback is $8.24 but you need to add shipping costs of about $14 for standard shipping (includes per item and shipment cost) so that “cheap” paperback will cost about $22.24 or about R164.23 and it will take a few weeks to arrive from the USA. When it comes to the Kindle version of the same book, you pay $11.99 (about R88.54) and you will have the book on your device in a few minutes (probably less time than it takes to find your keys to drive to the shops to buy the book in paperback). Kindle books do vary in price but I hazard a guess that the price works out relatively cheap when compared to physical versions.
The big problem with ebooks is availability. Despite all the books available on the Kindle for SA customers, we don't have the full catalogue of books available to us. I have yet to discover a real rationale for this aside for increasingly arbitrary geographical restrictions and the need to protect traditional distribution channels and retail outlets. Ebooks are pretty flexible. I can read an Amazon ebook on my Kindle, my Android phone and my MacBook. Each device will sync to the last point I read up to so I can just pick up where I left off. I can store thousands of books on a single device. Those two factors alone change my approach to reading.
What I really want, as a customer, is to be able to buy a digital version of any book available in print, ideally. I am happy to pay a reasonable price for it but why should I have to buy a paper version? One book which comes to mind is Anathem which is a pretty hefty book which runs to several hundred pages. It doesn't seem to be available on the Kindle and the Audible version is restricted to us here in SA. The book is available here off the shelf, why can't I buy the digital version?
The next big issue which we will have to contend with is ebook formats. Apple and other ebook retailers are pushing the epub standard which the Kindle doesn't support. This sort of fragmentation of the market can't be good for customers.
One thing you really can't ignore is the growth of the ebook market. While the $/R values show huge disparities, the trend is very real and not to be dismissed. Also don't forget that paper books are entrenched as a medium whereas ebooks are relatively new. Ebooks have quite a hill to climb just to address paper books entrenched status in our society but I suspect they will become the primary way many people will read going forward.
According to your numbers, ebooks sales are about 5% of all book sales in the US. I have no idea whether this is an encouraging or not statistic, but I would venture to guess that ebook sales will continue to rise, which makes them a very viable proposition.
Two arbitary points I'd like to make:
Ebooks and printed books are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I remember, a long while back, when some management from Exclusive Books broke away to start a new bookshop chain, Facts and Fiction. At first, Exclusive Books thought that they would take a chunk of their market share, but in fact, sales *increased*. It would seem that more options created a bigger market. (This is certainly true for me: I buy ebooks that I would never buy in hard print, and vice versa)
And, as a complete aside: On my last visit to Austin, I visited a major mall, for the sole purpose of visiting their bookshop and buying a stack of them. But guess what? No bookshop at the mall! And now I hear that Barnes and Nobles is up for sale due to decreasing turnover. Very, very worrying. Online bookshops are grabbing the market, and they are the ones controlling the ebook distribution. I think we are going to see a huge change of stats in the next five years or so.
I think you are right about that trend Eve. It will be sad to see physical bookstores decline but content is increasingly digital and we shouldn't be surprised to see ereaders and similar devices become the primary way we consume content in the near future.
Thanks for the feedback Paul. For the record I looked at regular pricing rather than one of sale specials which you use for comparison of local eBook pricing. I used Amazon to illustrate 'local' pricing in the States rather than working on the assumption that South Africans would purchase at that price and import.
The point I made was not that eBooks isn't growing but that they are still very far from surpassing print book sales. If you glanced at the Amazon press release in question it is certainly the impression they seem to want to create.
I'm still unclear why my conclusions would be labeled misleading.
Hi Herman
Your “regular” pricing versus sale pricing distinction doesn't really make much difference. I used the same book for pricing comparisons and the same principle applies to other books. Dan Brown's Lost Symbol, for example, is a recent book. The Amazon pricing is $10.12 and $9.99 (about R73.32 and R72.38 respectively) for the Kindle and mass paperback versions, respectively. The paperback costs about R118.11 on kalahari.net and R100 at Exclusive Books through the exclus1ves site.
Your post was a little misleading because you implied that paperbacks would be cheaper for SA readers who were reading the post. You should have clarified that paperbacks would be a cheaper option if ordered in the US or where Amazon's additional shipping charges wouldn't apply. For South Africans, the Kindle pricing is where the bargain is.
As for the Amazon press release, it clearly states that Kindle books are outselling hardcover books, not all books. They are very specific about that.
When I looked at the pricing issue at the time of writing I did not see any significant savings for local eBook consumers. Retailers adjust the prices on a regular basis by their own admission. One day you see real savings, a week later you do not. For the record I phoned Kalahari.net at the time of writing to ask them about their pricing policy, and though I got very little on the record information, I can say that their stated policy is for pricing on eBooks to be just below the price of printed books, though this is not always implemented (as at the time of writing this story). As for being “misleading” I can only say that at the time of writing my figures showed it would in fact have been cheaper for me to buy a paperback copy of the books mentioned that an eBook.
It's not a fait accompli that eBooks will cost less than printed books. Personally I think that is outrageous but not everybody will agree.
As for the Amazon release – I found it disingenuous. As a number of commentators have pointed out hard covers are hardly considered a viable print option and many books will never see a hardcover edition. It's for this reason that Jacinda Woodhead notes in her analysis of the issue that “ebooks vs hardcovers is a peculiar comparison.”
TheBigMoney.com notes that “judging by the way the story has ricocheted around the media world, Amazon has played its cards very well. But because it's being so coy, we have to assume that the numbers are not as good as they might be when reported simply as, well, numbers.”
I don't agree with you regarding ebook pricing. eBooks seems to be pretty consistently cheaper than paper versions and they should be. If we're comparing apples with apples then it still works out cheaper to get an ebook version of a book bought from SA. That does change if you are in the USA and buying books there and the differentiator is shipping costs.
Amazon's emphasis on hardcover sales is a pretty transparent slant. I agree with you about the pointlessness, waste even, of hardcover books but it would be really interesting to get some figures about paperback and ebook sales though. Paper book sales would almost certainly outstrip ebook sales but I think that trend will shift too.
I am more concerned about book selection here in SA. The region based availability doesn't make sense to me in this global age and I would like to see the same ebooks available everywhere. I think the next issue is going to be formats. Why doesn't the Kindle support epub? ePub looks like it is going to become a pretty important format which Apple and Google have adopted. That is a lot of momentum there and Amazon needs to take one for the team and at least support the format.