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.

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.