Will E-books Have A Significant Impact On Hardback Book Sales?
Amazon's clearly stated policy of setting the price of Kindle books at $ 9.99 or less has led to some tough discussions with the major publishing houses. Recently, this even resulted in the brief removal of books by publishing giant McMillan from the Amazon website. McMillan books are now being sold on the Amazon site, and they may have managed to secure more favourable pricing for their books - in the short term at least - but the large publishing houses need to take care.
The very fact that the Kindle reader became Amazon's top selling product so rapidly shows how quickly the public have taken to e-book readers. As well as the Kindle, there are many different e-book readers available for consumers to choose from. Although the market is very new, and still in a developmental phase, it is growing exponentially.
Right now, e-book reader owners may be in the minority - and this will probably be the case for the near to mid-term future - but they are already forming an important and influential market segment in the industry. People who buy e-book readers do not read a book a month. People who buy e-book readers read lots of books. They are, in other words, key customers for publishing firms.
They are also likely to enjoy a fairly high level of disposable income, otherwise they would be unlikely to spend well over $200 on what is, after all, a discretionary spend. In all probability they will be well educated, they are certainly well read, and they are quite likely to be aware of new trends and topical issues.
They will certainly be aware that e-books cost much less to produce and deliver than conventional hardback or paperback editions. They will most likely be aware that e-books - even when the materials used to produce the reader hardware is taken into consideration - are better for the environment. They probably enjoy the ease of buying books for their readers - many of them might buy even more books as a result of this. They are, most likely, lovers of reading rather than lovers of books. When they are reading a good book, they probably don't even notice if they are using a Kindle reader, a Sony PRS or thumbing through a handsome leather bound edition - a real book if you like. It would be a mistake for any publisher to overlook these early adopters of e-book reader technology.
However, that may be just what many of these publishers are in danger of doing at the moment. Many of the major publishing houses are keen to defend the profits they make from the sale of hardback books. For this reason they have pressurised book retailers to fix the price of e-books higher than they might otherwise have wished. In the short term, this may prove to be a good strategy for protecting the publisher's profits - but profits aside, there is very little apparent reason to take this step, something which must be blatantly obvious to many consumers.
The very fact that the Kindle reader became Amazon's top selling product so rapidly shows how quickly the public have taken to e-book readers. As well as the Kindle, there are many different e-book readers available for consumers to choose from. Although the market is very new, and still in a developmental phase, it is growing exponentially.
Right now, e-book reader owners may be in the minority - and this will probably be the case for the near to mid-term future - but they are already forming an important and influential market segment in the industry. People who buy e-book readers do not read a book a month. People who buy e-book readers read lots of books. They are, in other words, key customers for publishing firms.
They are also likely to enjoy a fairly high level of disposable income, otherwise they would be unlikely to spend well over $200 on what is, after all, a discretionary spend. In all probability they will be well educated, they are certainly well read, and they are quite likely to be aware of new trends and topical issues.
They will certainly be aware that e-books cost much less to produce and deliver than conventional hardback or paperback editions. They will most likely be aware that e-books - even when the materials used to produce the reader hardware is taken into consideration - are better for the environment. They probably enjoy the ease of buying books for their readers - many of them might buy even more books as a result of this. They are, most likely, lovers of reading rather than lovers of books. When they are reading a good book, they probably don't even notice if they are using a Kindle reader, a Sony PRS or thumbing through a handsome leather bound edition - a real book if you like. It would be a mistake for any publisher to overlook these early adopters of e-book reader technology.
However, that may be just what many of these publishers are in danger of doing at the moment. Many of the major publishing houses are keen to defend the profits they make from the sale of hardback books. For this reason they have pressurised book retailers to fix the price of e-books higher than they might otherwise have wished. In the short term, this may prove to be a good strategy for protecting the publisher's profits - but profits aside, there is very little apparent reason to take this step, something which must be blatantly obvious to many consumers.
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