Re: "The Elusive E-book"

From: "Aaron Walker"

> >The ebook needs a paying structure to become big. That is the 
> >devil in the detail for it. >The ebook which relates to the 
> >traditional print book will have a future as a free and low 
> >cost product, but the matter of how to >mount enough business 
> >on it to get mass use is the question.
>
> I think part of the issue hurting e-books is authors and 
> publishers seeing e-books solely as a way to drive paper book 
> sales - and mostly for free.
>
> I'm new to e-publishing so I can't really say how that came to 
> be. It makes it very hard for e-publishers to compete on equal 
> footing if traditional publishers will happily give away the 
> e-book version in the hopes to drive paper sales.
>
> How can the e-book industry then expect to become viable and 
> mature if we are constantly having to compete with free 
> content?
> Aaron J. WalkerPublisher
> http://www.walkbroadpublishing.com


Aaron,

This is one of the problems that has got a lot of attention. 
But I think it started with small operations, rather than big 
ones.   Also bear in mind that the ebook market, in terms of 
those aware of it, is very small still.

My observation - and it is casual rather than researched - is 
that sales of ebooks are becoming significant, both in terms of 
that share of the ebook market and in terms of the comparison 
with pbooks.   There are other factors that I think have hardly 
been brought into the equation.

On this list there is a strong contingent that loves the written 
word very strongly and does not require a book to be shaped and 
designed.   For them text files and various specialised readers 
are happy ways of satisfying an impressive appetite for books.

But this is like the old days of reading typed MS or duplicated 
ones.   The major part of the market will not be attracted by 
such rudimentary material.   If it is quantity of sales that are 
desired most of the traditional features of publishing will have 
to be part of the ebook experience too.

That is why, despite the valiant and worthy efforts of Gutenburg 
and others, there may be a stronger market for the attractive 
format classic and oop work for a price, than for the free text 
file.

But this costs, as I am sure most publishers on this list know. 
And those costs have to be recovered.   Exactly what this means 
in terms of percentage of the equivalent pbook I leave others to 
argue for the moment.   But while the ebook market remains small 
the most viable action for the big publisher is to put existing 
pbooks into digital offerings and test different price 
structures.

I think Baen - I am sure others too - has demonstrated some 
success, but that has come from a mixture of marketing devices, 
in which the pbook remains important.

Which leaves the interesting question:  To what extent has the 
stand-alone ebook a future?

Joseph Harris 


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