E-books and e-book readers are a relatively recent phenomenon. However, the public seems to have taken to them very rapidly. A lot of the thanks for that has to go to the Amazon Kindle reader – in particular the Kindle 2.0 which was released in February of 2009. The third generation Kindle was released in August of 2010 and, despite prophecies of doom for the Kindle following the release of the Apple iPad, is selling faster than ever.
However, it was the Kindle 2.0 that really brought e-books to the attention of the public.
Equally important was the large number of Kindle books available. Amazon has always been ahead of the chasing pack in terms of the number of titles on offer. Today they have over 750,000 Kindle books available on their Kindle store – and that’s just the paid titles. There are over 1.8 million out of copyright titles which can be downloaded free of charge.
However, whilst the public may have taken to e-books, the same cannot necessarily be said about the major publishing houses. The introduction of e-books has totally changed the traditional publishing cycle. Not only are e-books cheaper than printed books – due to the fact that they require no paper, ink or bindings – but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be made available at the same time as the hardback. No need to wait months for the paperback, the e-book version is available from day one.
Obviously, having a cheaper version available at the same time as the hardback is something which could impact upon the sales of hardback books. According to Amazon, they are currently selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks. This seems to have given many of the big publishers cause for concern. They have already had several run ins with Amazon over the pricing of e-books.
Publishers like Penguin, Hachette and Harper Collins recently switched to the “agency model” for their e-books. What this means is that the publishers set the price rather than 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 owners quickly retaliated by awarding “one star” reviews to books where they felt that the Kindle book price was too high. Some fairly critical comments were left on the Amazon website – aimed at the publishers by and large – and it was suggested that potential customers boycott both the Kindle and the hardback versions until prices are set at more reasonable levels. Some prices have already come down.
Here's a couple of fairly typical comments left on the Amazon UK website:
"The price of this book is simply absurd. An e-book costing more than the hardback? Ridiculous. I enjoy Iain Banks' work and wait for each new novel with great anticipation. But I'm not going to pay these nonsense prices. Does the publisher take me for a fool?"
"I am generally a big fan of the Culture books but there is no way I will pay more than the hardback price for an e-book version. This is simply publisher's greed."
It seems to be incredibly short sighted of the publishers to take such a blatantly profit oriented tack. After all, it seems reasonable to assume 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 allowing for the materials used in the e-book readers themselves. It seems likely that the owners of e-book readers could work this out and that they would, quite reasonable, expect prices to be set accordingly.
Whilst it’s not out of the question that the publisher’s tactics may help to maintain their profits in the short term, they run the risk of antagonising their best customers by adopting this approach. Artificial price hikes are likely to alienate the buying public and, after a series of one star reviews and public calls for buying boycotts, authors would probably also be somewhat unhappy. Publishers have every bit as much to gain from the e-book revolution as the public. The savings apply on both sides of the fence, publishers save money – which should be passed on to the public. 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.