Editorial: "The market is even bigger than we thought." Maybe.
John Mesjak on July 29, 2010 In today's PWxyz post about Kindle 3 being announced, the Amazon VP of Kindle Content (ie, the guy who holds the publishers' hands) was quoted.
“The market is even bigger than we thought,” said Russ Grandinetti, v-p of Kindle content about the size of the e-reader audience. He reiterated statements made by Amazon last week that since the company lowered the price of the Kindle to $189 sales have accelerated.
This feels a bit to me like Dave Bowman's famous last line from 2001, "... and oh my God – it's full of stars!"
Amazon has seemingly discovered the hollow star of the eBook market: get the price low enough and you discover a vast pocket universe of people who wouldn't have bought an eBook reader at twice the price. But really, if you get it down low enough, you'll discover that even people who wouldn't have paid full price for a paperback screed by Glenn Beck with a blurb from George W. Bush and a metallic-embossed American flag on the cover at the checkout at Wal-mart will buy an ereader. But then what?
The question is really not just about vast numbers of people buying low-priced ereaders equating to vast numbers of people buying books and buying more books after that. Because at a super low price, the ereader isn't the same as buying a lot of books. It's like buying a super-low-priced book cover that you can then put other books into. You still have to go ahead and buy the books to put on the Kindle (or other gadget).
Will all those super-low-price buyers go nuts with their credit cards and become rabid ebook-edition buyers? Have we really discovered a magical world full of customers who were just waiting for the GADGET that would enable them to start buying books? A magical world full of customers who seem to have been unaware of the wonder of books when they were merely printed on paper?
Or have we just found a world of people who will buy the next hot gadget made in China, no matter what it is, so long as it's super-low-priced? ("Dude - it's like a Nintendo DS for words!!")
It seems more likely that the universe of dedicated readers of books – no matter what the format might be – is a finite one. There are only so many of us out there. That's why the book business has been cheering so hard for young fans of JK Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. THOSE new readers who got hooked on books are the future generation of book readers and we certainly want them to keep on buying and loving books. But for the rest of us? Our habits are set in stone. We're already book buyers or we aren't.
A shiny new Kindle or iPad or Kobo or Nook won't convert a non-book buyer into a rabid book buyer. It might give us some incremental growth. But not revolutionary growth. The market isn't bigger than we thought. It's exactly the size we were afraid it might be. eBook readers aren't a panacea for our business. They're a bandaid. A shiny new bandaid.
Publishing folks like to point at the music industry and say, "We saw what happened with the death of CDs and the rise of the mp3 and we don't want to make that mistake. Look how hard we're working to make ebook purchasing friendly and simple. We're not going to lose business to piracy."
But, to judge from the quote I opened with, we've forgotten the lesson the music business learned BEFORE the death of CDs: the death of the LP. The music business hopped onto CDs with both feet and surfed a happy wave of massive sales as customers started replacing one format of recorded music with another. But soon enough, even that wave petered out.
This massive acquisition of ebook readers in 2010 may make for a bright and shiny holiday season for ebook retailers. And it might even contribute to a gloomy holiday season for bookstores that still specialize in the "books printed on paper" category. But I'll be waiting and watching for statistics that come out in the next months that report on just how many actual paid ebooks are bought by all those owners of new ebook readers. Then we'll see just how big this market really is.
Reader Comments (3)
Well it seems you are an independent book rep. A flat earther if you will. And the world is round.
I love books, I own about a thousand. But only about 50 were bought new. What's that mean? It means the economics of book publishing are simply wrong. And kids don't read because of you flat earthers.
When I was a kid I had to ride the bus to the library. Not many of my friends did. With e-readers kids won't have to ride the bus any longer. I could go on for thousands of words on this topic, but I won't.
But you really should leave denial behind and try to think of new ways to make money instead of attempting to maintain the status quo.
btw, I have more than enough money to buy any number of new books. But I won't. Very few books are worth keeping. Think that one through and balance that against the new e-book pricing and storage. I'll be buying plenty of e-books. The authors should be compensated for their work, as for the rest of the current publishing infra structure, well, they simply aren't doing a very good job and don't deserve what they are asking for.
Think about it. How many books have you read lately that are worth keeping?
The logical next step of course is free books with advertising. Most books aren't much better than magazine filler after all is said and done. This leads to a tiered publishing system. You can figure out the rest without my help, methinks.
Thanks for adding your voice to the discussion, Pageman99. I don't know yet if I'm in denial about my chosen career - time will tell.
But I do know this: in a future world comprised entirely of e-books, you wouldn't own a library of 1000 books where you only bought 50 of them at new prices and 950 at used book prices. Used ebooks just don't exist - especially thanks to restrictive DRM limitations like Amazon has put in place with Kindle. So to build up your library of 1000 books, you'll be paying full market value (whatever that might turn out to be - $9.99 or higher or lower) for each book.
I'm glad you'll be paying for your ebooks. Authors are the source of everything we do in publishing and bookselling and they deserve to get paid for their creativity and effort.
But I disagree with your claim that the rest of the publishing infrastructure is without value. I do think that many aspects of the publishing business are built on economic assumptions that worked just fine when Alfred A. Knopf was running Knopf. But just because some parts are broken doesn't necessarily mean that the whole setup should be chucked out the window.
If you want to continue the discussion here, leave out the name-calling next time. We try to run a polite ship here at my3books.
Name calling? Please expand on that. Flat earther? I apologize, it was used more for effect. I meant ot emphasize your point of view more than anything. Certainly not as an insult. Sorry.
And yes, Knopf was better when he was running the show.
And Harper Lee wouldn't have been able to write 'Mockingbird' according to the opinion of many. But how often does that happen these days? And what should that 'added value' cost? Remember it brings us 'Love Story' and 'Bridges of Madison County' as well. 8-)
And drm is a problem. And yes used books wouldn't be available in the quantities they are now. But then there are the few I gladly paid full price for. And there likely would be many more if my reading became more efficient due to ebooks. Access to the first two chapters is a wonderful thing. Certainly we'll all be exposed to more authors.
This isn't a new conversation for me. My sister has spent a career in the Art History department at the U. of Georgia. My son's mother in law is a retired librarian. My daughter teaches. And so on throughout my very large overeducated extended family.
I'm a fan of market forces. But not always a fan of its decisions. Time will tell.