Publishers try to read the industry’s future – Regina Leader
There’s a revolution in reading filled with innovative and exciting possibilities underway, but whether the book industry will be able to sustain itself remains to be seen.
Ebooks have transformed the experience of reading — everything from interactive fiction, where readers choose the outcome of a story, to books with embedded links to video or audio is possible. But ebooks have also caused a sea change in the publishing business model.
“There are great things that are happening, but the revenue isn’t following,� said Robert Ballantyne, associate publisher of Arsenal Pulp Press and president of the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia. “What’s happening now is just turmoil and uncertainty. Where we will be in five years, you can’t tell.�
Former Vancouver Public Library city librarian Paul Whitney said the fact that many bookstores are disappearing doesn’t help.
“The bottom line is it’s a mess and everybody’s worried because they can’t yet see the end game,� said Whitney, who has written a number of reports about ebooks as a consultant.
The book publishing industry in Canada is a $2-billion business, according to Statistics Canada. In B.C. alone, the book publishing industry has annual sales in excess of $150 million, according to a recent report on B.C.’s creative industries.
While a Canadian breakdown is difficult to come by, figures provided by Whitney to the The Sun show ebooks capturing 18 per cent of market share in North America in 2011, a year dominated by ebook growth.
Noah Genner, president and CEO of BookNet Canada, which monitors book supply, said there is not a concise picture of the ebook market share in Canada, but his organization is working on it.
“Our educated guess is that it is around eight to 10 per cent, but we don’t have the numbers,� Genner said. “The number has grown significantly over the last two years and was almost non-existent, or at least too small to be important, pre-2010.�
In January, Amazon announced that their ebook sales exceeded paperback sales, while in February, the New York Times added separate ebook bestseller lists to their book review pages.
Ebook numbers are likely to keep growing as more people make the switch to digital books, but the prices might go down: a lawsuit in the U.S. claims that Apple Corp. colluded with book publishers to set ebook prices higher than those set by Amazon. If Apple and the book publishers are found guilty, a similar class-action lawsuit underway in Canada will probably mean Canadians who have bought electronic books in the past two years could be compensated.
The Apple price-setting model allowed publishers to determine the selling price of a book, and has been dubbed the agency model. With Amazon, as with bricks-and-mortar bookstores, the publisher sells the product for a wholesale price and sets a suggested retail price, but the retailer decides the selling price.
While the lawsuit sounds like good news for consumers, it’s possible it could be detrimental for publishers and authors who could be forced to sell their products for even lower prices to compete with Amazon.
“We hope it doesn’t lower prices, because that would harm revenues for publishers — and by extension authors — and we’re going to end up without any books,� Ballantyne said. “With retail [business] crashing, publishers don’t need the lower prices�
Amazon, the massive online retailer with worldwide revenues of $13.18 billion in the first quarter of 2012, is a leader in the ebook market after jumping out of the gate early with its Kindle ereader in 2007. As a comparison, in Canada, the Kobo was not released until 2010.
Jesse Finkelstein, chief operating officer at Vancouver publisher Douglas McIntyre, said some of Amazon’s deep discounting of book prices would’ve meant the company was taking a loss on some books, but they were willing to do that to encourage people to buy the Kindle ereader.
“A loss leader approach is understandable if you’re trying to make sure that your device and your retailing venture is the one that wins out in the long term,� Finkelstein said.
The more book prices are cut, consumer expectations for cheap books increase and book publishing becomes unsustainable, Finkelstein said.
While bookstores and publishers may see Amazon as a formidable competitor who could swallow them whole, some authors say Amazon has removed the gatekeeper and enabled them to publish their books quicker and easier than through traditional publishers.
Sunshine Coast author Lars Guignard has published three books on Amazon, starting with Lethal Circuit, and says he is making a good living on ebooks alone. He makes about the same amount whether he sells a book in electronic or traditional format. The terms of payment for authors who use traditional publishers depend on their contract, which will be split between the publisher, the bookstore and the author.
Vancouver author Timothy Taylor said he would not consider giving up his relationship with his publisher (Random House) to create a self-published ebook because he values the editing and promotion provided by a traditional publisher. Self-published authors can either put a book up on Amazon unedited, or pay someone to edit their work.
The changes in publishing have meant readers have many more books to choose from, he said.
Taylor said that despite his reservations, he is excited about the creative potential for ebooks, as well as the potential to reach readers who might not have otherwise discovered his work.
“It almost feels like we could open up new markets — people who aren’t buying physical books might buy ebooks,� Taylor said.
D M published an enhanced ebook app of David Suzuki’s The Legacy in 2010, but found it tough to compete against other apps, because most apps are sold for extremely low prices. Although the project was very positive for the publisher in terms of technical production experience and experimentation, consumers were not prepared to pay much more than the cost of the ebook for the experience.
“I don’t believe consumers are willing to pay a premium for enhanced ebooks. The market is not there yet,� Finkelstein said.
There have been some notable examples of writers who have self-published an ebook and later received either critical acclaim or commercial success, such as Amanda Hocking, who writes paranormal books, or the Julie and Julia cooking blog that was later made into a movie. Atop the New York Times bestseller lists for ebooks is Fifty Shades of Grey, an erotic novel that gained popularity as an ebook and has since been published as a paperback. Right now, books that are viable as ebooks alone tend to be books that are written either by a well-established author or those written in a popular genre, such as romance, which have dedicated, voracious readers, Whitney said.
Margaret Reynolds, executive director of Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, said it’s important to remember that the success stories of self-published ebook authors are the exceptions.
“That’s one in a million. It’s not going to happen for everyone,� Reynolds said.
On the other hand, “if you have an exceptional work, you will be found,� Ballantyne said. Ballantyne cited DOA frontman Joe Keithley’s pictorial history of the band as one notable ebook project taken on by Arsenal Pulp Press, with support from Apple.
While the potential of reader-controlled storylines — like the Choose Your Own Adventure books of the ’70s and ’80s — or other forms of interactive books filled with podcasts, visual effects or music is limitless, some readers might prefer the quiet of reading a traditional book. Whitney said part of the appeal of reading is avoiding other distractions, such as email.
“I think the born-digital generation will be seeking out offline time,� Whitney said.
Hal Wake, artistic director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival, said he thinks there will always be a place for print books as well as ebooks. “There will remain the desire to use one’s imagination completely and utterly and there will be others who say, ‘let’s see what we can do.’ They’re both potentially equally valuable,� Wake said.
Sun Books Editor
tsherlock@vancouversun.com
Article source: http://www.leaderpost.com/entertainment/Publishers+read+industry+future/6608205/story.html
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