Make or Break

As soon as I ask for information on ebooks sales Waterstone’s oblige by releasing figures for sales of ebooks from their website. Wow – the power of the blogosphere comes to Publishing Lore.

In fact David Kohn appears to have talked a little about this at the recent Galley Club meeting – I wish I had been there. At least the Atlantic Books blogger has put David Kohn’s absurd statistic about more ebook sales on Christmas day than real books sales in its place. I think this meaningless stat was there to distract from the reality that actually sales of ebooks aren’t that great.

Waterstone’s claim to have sold 30,000 Sony Readers and 75,000 ebooks. That’s two and a half books per reader. If you assume, as I do, that ebook readers are bought for or by avid readers then this doesn’t seem like very high sales to me. I’d love to know how many paper books these Sony Reader owners have bought in the same period but we’ll never know. I’ve certainly bought lots more books than this in the time that the Sony Reader has been out.

One of my authors has just bought a reader and I look forward to hearing what they think about it. I might need to consider producing their book as an ebook but am yet to be convinced there is a market out there.

This blog is in danger of being dominated by discussions of ebooks – so will rest my case there for a bit though 2009 looks to be shaping into the make or break year for ebooks, so I am sure I’ll revisit the subject.

Vanity Fair

Yesterday I spotted my 3^rd Sony Reader in the wild. This time it was being used by a woman in her 20s on the train.

So already my insignificant statistics have been proven worthless. It seems that it isn't just men indulging their stereotypical love of gadgets who have Sony Readers.

However the woman on the train was reading Vanity Fair which almost certainly is one of the free texts on the Sony Reader and this I believe strengthens my supposition that Sony Readers are being used as the best and cheapest way for avid readers to get their hands on 100 classics that they would otherwise not buy or read. After all, 100 classics from Wordsworth would cost you £250 - £25 more than the Sony Reader and they'd take up a whole lot of space. If you just want to tick off the classics on your read list – this must be the way to do it.

So will these Reader owners ever get through these 100 titles and the 26,000 available at Project Gutenberg and actually buy an ebook? I'm beginning to have my doubts.

It seems there are other Reader owners out there who have yet to buy an ebook. Scott Pack is interviewed today on the North Meadow Media blog and claims not to have bought an ebook yet for his Sony Reader, though he has speculated on ebook sales.

Perhaps for the publishing world, Waterstone's announcement that they've sold 30,000 Readers isn't as significant as I thought. What we really need are some figures on their sales of ebooks.

Vanity Fare

Vanity Publishing has been around a long time but modern technology has really enabled it to take off. Print on demand and ecommerce have meant companies like Lulu.com have been able to publish many books that commercial publishers wouldn't consider. Unfortunately some Vanity Publishers (not Lulu) have a terrible reputation for quality and service and many have been accused of misrepresenting the service they provide to authors.

Now colour digital printing technology has developed to such an extent that Vanity Presses like Bob Books have appeared. These aren't really publishers – they don't make your books generally available to the book buying public – but they do allow people to produce 'books' of their photographs.

I saw this advertisement for Bob Books yesterday on the station platform.

Now on their website they claim 'The thing is, we love books and we're more than a little obsessive about quality. Our books are made in Switzerland – home of really well made things™ – combining traditional book-binding craftsmanship with state-of-the-art technology.'

However, I think I'd be wary of any publisher who could design, print, distribute and display this 6 foot poster featuring this terrible typo.

What were they thinking of? This?

P.S. Apologies for the quality of the photos taken with my mobile phone in very challenging lighting conditions.

A Tramp Abroad

Having expressed surprise at the sales of the Sony Reader just a few days ago, I have now seen TWO readers in the wild whilst tramping around the country.

I saw my first on the tube in London. It was being read rather ostentatiously, by a man in his late 30s or early 40s. I don't know what he was reading on it.

The second was being read by my neighbour on a recent train journey. Again a man, this reader was probably in his late 50s or early 60s and a peak over his shoulder revealed he was reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer which I imagine came free on the Reader.

These two sightings, though statistically insignificant, did make me wonder:-

• Are ebook readers more likely to by purchased by men indulging a stereotypical love of gadgets?


• If ebook readers are more likely to be owned by men will this lead to many/enough ebook sales given that most books are bought by women?
  
• Given that ebook readers are only likely to be bought by or for avid readers will they generate significant sales of new ebooks? After all, even an avid reader is likely to find plenty of unread classic titles amongst the 100 you get free on the Sony Reader.

Now if you were an avid reader and ebook reader owner you'd have access to the 26,000 classics from the Project Gutenberg collection (including today's inaugural speech from President Barack Obama). Given this, would you ever BUY an ebook?

Perhaps publishers of contemporary ebooks should hope that owners of ebook readers agree with Mark Twain, coincidentally of course the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, who described a classic as "something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read".

Digital Investment

So Blackwell are restructuring and in order to preserve cash are scaling back their digital ambitions. This does surprise me but I imagine it is a result of the credit crunch. If you’ve a cash shortage and can not raise credit for investment in the current climate then things may well have to be cut.

The reason that it surprises me is that I know that Blackwell have experience of good returns on digital investment. Three or four years ago I went to a Publishers Association seminar at the rather grand Stationers’ Hall. At the seminar a Blackwell’s representative explained that since they had moved to exclusively electronic ordering for their shops they had reduced their transaction cost from something like 27p to 4p per transaction. It had required quite a lot of investment but the return had been worthwhile. Of course further returns on digital investment are going to be harder to achieve – 4p to 1p per transaction would be very tough.

Given this experience you would think they might see digital investment as a sensible strategy. It isn’t difficult to see other areas where digital investment might create a return. The most obvious is the Blackwell online shop. Functional as it may be, it looks a little dated in comparison with the revamped Amazon and Waterstone’s sites and doesn’t really take advantage of Blackwell’s more academic focus. Where for instance is the ability for a student to check whether or not their campus bookshop has the book they want? This functionality is available on the Waterstone’s site but would probably be even more useful to Blackwell’s customers.

Still it appears for the moment that any changes are likely to be more fundamental in what is a worrying time for Blackwell in particular and the book retail trade in general. Let’s hope they got through this. Waterstone’s needs the competition. The UK book trade needs a strong Blackwell too.

Critical Mass

Waterstone’s have announced that they have sold 30,000 Sony eReaders in the UK. Sony claim 300,000 have been sold worldwide of which I guess most have been sold in technology mad Japan and South Korea. Taken with reports of large sales of the Amazon Kindle there are clearly lots more people with eReaders than I would have believed.

I have to say I am quite astounded and will really have to rethink my view of the future of ebooks. Until now I have been an ebook sceptic. I’ve been in publishing long enough to have seen two or three digital revolutions that ‘were going to be the death of books’. All of these claims have to date been unfounded. I am sure that this new ebook revolution won’t mean the death of books but I am starting to seriously think that there may be a sustainable market for consumer ebooks.

Until now I believed that consumer ebooks wouldn’t really take off without the presence of a critical mass of devices out in the wider market place and I wasn’t convinced that the critical mass would ever develop. I am not sure that 30,000 is that critical mass but it must be getting close. 250,000 Kindles in the USA must be close to a critical mass for that market.

If only the two devices didn’t use different file formats publishers would have 500,000 devices to make ebooks for, instead of having to make two file formats. Given that Amazon have lead the way in the commercial sale of DRM free music which has forced Apple to sell DRM free music on iTunes, it will be interesting to see if Amazon persist in using a proprietary DRM system for the Kindle.

With any luck the Kindle 2 is being delayed so that they can convert it to take epub formats. Given this and a European launch of the Kindle and I’ll have to looking at ebook production myself and that will be a change.

Better Late Than Never

So Waterstone's have announced their results for the Christmas period and Gerry Johnson has declared himself satisfied with a like for like drop in sales of 2%. Given the wider retail climate this doesn't seem too bad but it will be interesting to see what bonus he gets this year - but it is hard to believe it will be anything like the £360,000 he reportedly got last April. It could have been worse – at least the chain will survive for the moment which is more than can be said for Woolies, Zavvi and a host of others.

I can't say I am too surprised. My Christmas shopping was done on the Monday before Christmas in one of the UK's largest towns. It boasts two Waterstone's – one in a town centre mall and one on the high street.

First I went to the mall shop. It was mobbed. There was a queue from the tills down the entire length of the store which looked as though it would take an age to negotiate. Although it was just before Christmas I wasn't aware of any big discounts but I had walked straight past the front of house displays to the 2 for 3 tables and shelves of fiction. These were busy enough so I imagined plenty of people were paying full price or the standard 3 for 2 prices.

I left without queuing and went to the high street shop. This too was mobbed but it is a smaller shop and the queue was smaller – though still very big. Fortunately a security guard (of whom more later) noticed me staring at the queue in dismay and directed me to the children's department where there was another till and a shorter queue. After 20 minutes I was served and left happy – but amazed at how busy the shop had been. One person in the queue in front of me had bought 10 books (three 3 for 2 offers and a tenth book) costing over £100.

From this brief experience I concluded the following:

1. Christmas may have been late but for Waterstone's it was looking good


2. Waterstone's was seriously understaffed at Christmas


3. Waterstone's will have lost sales due to the staffing levels this Christmas

Looking at the results it seems I was little off with 1. Yes it was late but it was only OK. I was definitely right about 2 and we'll never know about 3. If they hadn't had the 2nd store I would have left anyway and bought my gifts elsewhere and I certainly considered leaving the 2nd shop too. I imagine many people took one look at the queues and went elsewhere. If they did it represents a badly missed opportunity in what was a very competitive Christmas season.

Now Christmas is over I must head into town to see how the shops are doing. I fear that given the wider economic climate I have a 4th conclusion to make and that is that one of these 2 Waterstone's will close before the year end. They are less than 10 minutes walk from each other and though they could be said to be in different parts of town it does seem likely a cost conscious chain will not support the two overheads. We'll see. I wish them the best. The UK book trade needs a strong Waterstone's.

Hello and Welcome

After years of expressing my views through occasional letters to the editor of The Bookseller and Horace Bent, and of course to anyone who will listen in the pub, I've increasingly found myself commenting on The Bookseller site and other blogs. However commenting on others views isn't half the fun as starting the conversation. I've therefore decided to enter the blogosphere where I can spout my views, however nonsensical, and they can be ignored more easily.

Should you be passing, please feel free to comment. I'd welcome it. Despite years of experience there are many gaps in my knowledge regarding the business of publishing and bookselling and I'm hoping visitors will feel free to correct and educate me during their visit.

Despite the fact that in creating this blog I expect to be writing more about publishing than book retail many of my initial posts will be about the selling of books. The current economic climate is dominating most discussions and the focus is on retail.

I hope you find the blog interesting, vaguely amusing in places and hopefully infuriating enough to provoke a response.

Chris Nichol