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Children’s books triumph over threatened e-book takeover | The Australian

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from The Australian

“I think the (global) industry has seen off the threat, to be honest­,’’ Ms Drake said. “The growth in e-books is stagnating across the world, particularly in America. A couple of years ago, it was the great threat; it hasn’t really­ worked out that way.’’

Ms Drake admitted that “we all suffered to a certain degree when Borders and A&R went under’’, as those collapses entrenched­ the notion that bookstores were doomed.

However, alongside retailers such as Dymocks, Big W — which claims to be the nation’s biggest bookseller — realised kids’ books were key to holding back the digital tide. This is because­ most parents want to limit the time kids spend in front of screens.

“Parents don’t encourage their kids to read (e-books),’’ said Ms Drake, adding: “We deliberately engin­eered our range to be more appropriate for children, because we saw that that’s where the growth was going to be.’’

When the influential yet little-known bookseller started at Big W in 2008, children’s titles accounte­d for about 35 per cent of the discount department store’s book sales; now that is closer to half. Dymocks, meanwhile, has seen a 30 per cent rise in children’s book sales since 2010.

Social media-obsessed teens have also spurned the e-book revolution. Ms Drake said: “Where you’d think teens would be a signif­icant e-reading population, it never went that way. And certainly, with a phenomenon like Twilight or John Green, it was importa­nt (for teenagers) to have the artefact (the print book), and to be seen with the artefact.’’

via Children’s books triumph over threatened e-book takeover | The Australian.

Are e-Books Doomed?

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Michael Kozlowski, who has been writing about e-books for quite some time, now considers the format doomed:

goodereader

Major publishers have gained the ability to dictate their own prices on e-books and this has dramatically increased the cost to the customer. In many cases the hardcover is actually cheaper than the digital version and this is primarily due to predatory pricing.

Publishers have been making moves to capitalize on the convenience and instant delivery of e-Books by making them more expensive than their printed counterparts. I have talked to many high ranking executives off the record and they have told me that they foresee the destruction of the e-book market and are anticipating higher profits on print down the road.

There are many companies that are heavily involved in the e-book sector that have went out of business over the course of the last year. Sony killed off their consumer e-reader division and abandoned the Reader Store in every country, but Japan. Diesel eBooks, Oyster, Entitle, Txtr, Blinkbox Books and others have all closed up shop because e-books are no longer profitable.

further extracts:

The Kindle “has disappeared to all intents and purposes”, said James Daunt the head of Britain’s biggest book chain Waterstones. He also reported that print book sales lifted by 5% in December 2014 and that they plan on opening at least a dozen stores in 2015 . Foyles, the London chain of bookstores, said sales of physical books had risen 11% last Christmas. Across the pond, Australian bookseller Jon Page of Page and Pages said “Sales were up 3% last year, and will increase by 6% in 2015, which is fantastic because for the last three years we’d actually seen a decline.”

In a few short years most digital bookstores will be out of business and Amazon and Kobo will likely be the only players left. The only digital bookstores that will survive will be companies offering both hardware/software solutions and everyone else will be gone. The destruction of the digital book market has already been set in motion and there is nothing that can prevent the format from being completely annihilated.

via Publishers Initiate Predatory Pricing on e-Books to Destroy the Market.

Traditional books on paper open a new chapter of success

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Another piece celebrating the bouyancy of print and slowdown in ebook expansion:

Observer

Public affection for print runs deeper than some had thought. On the eve of the London Book Fair, a three-day trade extravaganza that starts on Tuesday, optimism is rippling through the industry that it can weather the digital age. The idea that the ebook will kill the paperback seems increasingly like a tall tale.

Total spending on print and electronic books increased by 4% to £2.2bn in 2014, according to market data firm Nielsen. Ebooks now account for around 30% of all books published, including almost 50% of adult fiction. But the decline in print is levelling off as migration to ebooks declines. For some in the industry, it is a sign the dust is beginning to settle after the great digital shake-up.

“Ebooks will continue to grow, but the speed of growth has started to slow and perhaps we are getting close to saturation in some areas,” said Steve Bohme, consumer director at Nielsen.

Millennials, the generation supposed to be glued to their screens, still buy paperbacks. Sales of children’s literature in print rose by 9% in 2014, largely driven by teens, twenty- and thirtysomethings buying fiction marketed as young adult, such as the Hunger Games series or The Fault in Our Stars, John Green’s love story about a teenager with cancer. The mood has also been buoyed by the resurgence of Waterstones, which reported a 5% rise in physical sales in December.

via Traditional books on paper open a new chapter of success | Books | The Guardian.

Long live the ebook – it’s a champion of the printed word, says Philip Jones

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With the public promiscuously hopping from one format to another, reports of the e-reader’s death look distinctly premature…

The rise of these electronic devices built only for reading has been a boon to the books sector. The transition to digital reading brought with it a new kind of publishing that was distinctly more experimental, energetic and (nakedly) commercial than that which preceded it. Just this week the publisher Little, Brown began publishing ebook shorts based on the hugely successful Broadchurch TV series that are made available to download in the hours after each show.

Outside of traditional publishing, digital reading has allowed authors to publish directly to marketplaces run by Amazon, Nook and Kobo. We have also seen the rise of fan-fiction sites (one of which helped create Fifty Shades) and writer development sites such as Wattpad and Movellas.

There is a vibrancy and quickness around publishing that can be directly linked to the arrival of the ebook. It has helped revive the print book market, with titles such as The Miniaturist and H is for Hawk published as beautifully rendered physical editions to be held, read and kept. The better publishers understand the boundaries of these different channels, the better they have become at delivering content to them.

via Long live the ebook – it’s a champion of the printed word | Philip Jones | Comment is free | The Guardian.

Both Waterstones & Foyles See Print Sales Rise and eReader Sales Drop

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ft

The UK’s leading high street bookseller said that sales of the Kindle ebook reader had plummeted this Christmas as a physical books market battered by ecommerce showed signs of improvement.
Waterstones said that sales of Amazon’s ebook reader had “disappeared to all intents and purposes”. The lossmaking chain of 290 bookshops had previously touted Kindle as the way to “solve the digital question” in 2012 when it launched a partnership with Amazon to sell the devices.

However, physical book sales at Waterstones rose 5 per cent in December as the company reaped the benefits of its store refurbishment programme and a relinquishing of control to local store managers who could respond to the tastes of local communities, said James Daunt, chief executive.

…

Foyles, the London chain of bookstores, said like-for-like sales of physical books had risen 11 per cent this Christmas. Sam Husain, chief executive, said sales of Barnes & Noble’s ebook reader the Nook were “not as impressive as one would expect them to be” and that physical book sales had outperformed ebooks.

via Waterstones plans more stores as book sales rise – FT.com.

Nearly three quarters of young people prefer print, according to Voxburner research

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The 16-24 generation is still firmly in favour of print books, new research shows, with 73% saying they prefer print over digital or audio formats.

Exclusive research conducted by Voxburner for The Bookseller showed that while nearly three-quarters of young people said they prefer the print form, only 27%  prefer e-books and 31% said they don’t buy e-books at all.

The survey questioned more than 900 young people in the UK about their book habits.
Luke Mitchell, director of Voxburner, said the research found people in the 16-24 age group think e-books are too expensive. “They told us they like to touch books and see the creases in the spine, but for bargain-driven young people the conversion to e-books will most likely be determined by price,” he said. “In our research, 70% said that £6.99 was a reasonable price to pay for a paperback but only 10% were prepared to pay the same for an e-book.”

When it comes to paperbacks, 37% of young people said they would pay £5.00-£7.00 and 35% said they would pay £3.00-£5.00. However, they are less willing to pay as much for e-books, with 43% saying they should cost less than £3.00

via Nearly three quarters of young people prefer print | The Bookseller.

Judith Kerr Confident E-books will not replace print

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E-books will not replace printed children’s books, bestselling children’s author Judith Kerr told the BBC.

Some books are “alright” as e-books, but only if they’re the type of book that is read once then cast aside, she said. “I don’t think printed books will ever disappear, they’re a totally different thing.”

via Judith Kerr: E-books will not replace print for children | The Bookseller.

Who reads books in America, and how?

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Interesting breakdown of US print/ebook reading habits – by age, gender, income etc.

The Pew Internet and American Life project has released a new report on reading, called E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps. It surveys American book-reading habits, looking at both print books and electronic books, as well as audiobooks. They report that ebook readership is increasing, and also produced a “snapshot” (above) showing readership breakdown by gender, race, and age. They show strong reading affinity among visible minorities and women, and a strong correlation between high incomes and readership.

via Who reads books in America, and how? – Boing Boing.

Print Sales Down Nearly 10% In 2013 But Publishing Mood Remains Robust

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Early indications show the number of printed sales in 2013 will be down almost 9% on 2012, a year which was itself down 4% on 2011. But Amazon’s reluctance to release data about Kindle downloads is a frustration for Nielsen’s BookScan team:

For Nielsen’s Russell Bremner, Amazon’s refusal to release figures for Kindle downloads is “the big issue for ebook sales”. With electronic books accounting for 17% of UK sales by volume according to consumer research conducted by Kantar World Panel and the internet retailer accounting for 79% of those sales, ebook figures for popular fiction remain something of a mystery, Bremner said. “We have no idea, unfortunately. I wish we did.”

Bookseller editor Philip Jones takes the positive view, clearly viewing the slip in print sales being more than compensated for by the rise of digital:

Despite the continuing fall in print sales, Jones remains bullish about prospects for 2014, suggesting that with almost 50% of the sales for big commercial titles shifting to digital editions and falling off the charts, a slide of 8% is “not bad”.

“We saw a lot of optimism at the London Book Fair and Frankfurt in 2013,” he added, “a lot of buying. Publishers have discovered that the more their business shifts to digital the more profitable it becomes, and they were spending some of that this year. Publishing is remarkably robust and incredibly positive, though with Amazon’s domination extending over more and more of the industry, who knows what the future will bring.”

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/dec/22/alex-ferguson-bestselling-book-my-autobiography

Impassioned Speech From Gaiman

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Neil Gaiman, delivering a lecture last night about the future of books, reading and libraries said the rise of ebooks did not mean the end for physical books and made an impassioned plea to stop library closures.

Gaiman said most of the publishing industry was trying to figure out what is going to happen in five or 10 years. “None of them know. All of the rules have changed … they are just making it up as they go along.”

Gaiman said reading fiction was one of the most important things people can do and he was passionate in his defence of libraries, the closure of which was stealing from the future, he said. “It is the equivalent of stopping vaccination programmes. We know what the results are. In order to remain a global power, in order to have a citizenry that is fulfilled and fulfilling their responsibilities and obligations, we need to have literate kids.”

via Neil Gaiman: Let children read the books they love | Books | The Guardian.