Kindle Hard Cover Case

The Big Publishing Houses Should Not Underestimate The Importance Of E-Book Reader Owners

E-book readers, and the e-books to read upon them, are a relatively new innovation. Even so, the public have accepted and become accustomed to them very rapidly. A good deal of the credit for that must surely go to the Amazon Kindle reader – in particular the Kindle 2.0 which was launched in February of 2009. The third generation Kindle was launched in August of 2010 and, in spite of numerous prophecies of doom for the Kindle following the release of Apple’s iPad, is selling faster than ever. However, it was the Kindle 2.0 that helped e-books to really take off.

Another important factor was the large selection of Kindle books on offer. Amazon has always had a lot more titles on offer than the chasing pack. At the moment they have more 800,000 Kindle books available on their website – and those are just the paid titles. They have a further 1.8 million out of copyright titles which can be downloaded free of charge.

However, although the public seems to have taken to e-books, it’s debatable if the same can be said for many of the major publishing firms. The traditional publishing cycle has been totally modified by the introduction of e-books. It’s not just that e-books are cheaper than printed books (since they consume no paper, ink or bindings) – there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be on sale simultaneously with the hardback edition. There’s no need to wait months for the paperback edition to appear, the e-book version is available immediately.

It seems obvious that hardback sales could be impacted by the fact that a cheaper version is available simultaneously with the hardback edition. Amazon advise that they are currently selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 hard cover editions. This seems to have caused a great deal of concern amongst many of the major publishing companies. They have already had some fairly fraught discussions with Amazon regarding e-book pricing.

Publishers like Harper Collins, Penguin and Hachette recently moved to the “agency model” for their e-books. In layman’s terms, the price is set by the publisher as opposed to the retailer (Amazon). This has seen e-book prices rise – in some cases to the point where they cost more than the hardback version.

Kindle users retaliated quickly by awarding “one star” reviews to books where they felt that the Kindle book price was excessively high. Some fairly blunt comments were left on the Amazon website – aimed at the publishers for the most part – and some irate readers went so far as to suggest that potential customers boycott both Kindle and hardback editions until prices are set at more reasonable levels. Some prices have already fallen.

Adopting such a profit oriented approach seems to be a little short sighted on the part of the publishers. After all, it seems reasonable to suppose that e-book reader owners read more than their fair share of books. You wouldn’t buy an e-book reader if you read a book a month, would you? In other words, e-book reader owners are the target market for the major publishing houses.

It also seems obvious that e-books should cost less than printed books. Apart from their lack of paper, ink and bindings, they have no delivery fee to speak of. They are also more environmentally friendly – even when the materials used in the e-book readers themselves are taken into account. It seems likely that e-book reader users would be able to work this out and that they would naturally expect prices to be correspondingly lower.

It could be that the publisher’s tactics will prove successful in the short term – however, they need to take care not to antagonise some of their best customers. Artificial price fixing is likely to antagonise the buying public and, after a series of one star reviews and public calls for boycotts, authors would most likely also be discontented. Publishers stand to gain just as much from the e-book revolution as the public. Publishers will also have reduced expenses when producing and selling e-book versions – and customers will expect the selling price of e-books to reflect these lower costs. If publishers can adapt to e-books, in the same way that readers have, they may continue to thrive. On the other hand, if their greed for short term profits blinds them to the possible opportunities afforded by this new medium, they will be rejected by both their readers and their authors.
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