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eBooks Industry Struggles With Potential
When we first became interested in the eBook industry in 2001 we were disappointed in most of what we found.
PDA's, the little calculator-type units with their credit-card-size viewing screens, could display a quick phrase or paragraph needed in a hurry, but it was hard to imagine anyone wanting to read an entire novel on one of them.
At least not if they had any other choice.
Maybe that's why a majority of eBooks we located on the early market were reference texts, not novels or any other "relaxation reading" subjects.
Fortunately for all of us, time does improve things. The industry has progressed and now there are thousands of new titles being ePublished every year.
Most of them are available in multiple formats, so whether you use your desktop, laptop, or a handheld reading device, you can still find reading material to fit your area of interest. There are new novels in every genre being released on a daily basis.
The biggest challenge for readers these days is to find them in a compatible format. Or to find reading divices that accept the format in which the books are being produced.
The road ahead is still full of pot holes.
But the challenge for the eBook industry itself is even greater, and assaults the ePublisher on multiple fronts.
Price and cost is a major frustrating issue for ePublishers. They must find a way to make the price structure more palpable to the readers before they can hope to earn a market share.
Mass market customers will not forego an $8 paperback novel on the grocery store shelf in favor of an $8 epublished novel that requires a $200 reading device to read it.
If eBook (and other eText) publishers could hit the $4-per-book target price we're striving for at LLPublish.com, it would increase the public's interest.
But we also have to find a better way to process the payment, which currently runs close to a third of the amount collected. That's why you see so many items on websites displaying their purchase price as one amount, and adding a handling charge as separate.
Many publishers have learned to improve the ratio by "packing" several titles into one purchase. That means the book you WANT to buy comes with one or more other titles attached, all in hopes to justify the price or at least to give the impression that the buyer is getting a bargain for the price.
Another battle for the ePublisher is the perception of easy theft in the form of electronic reproduction by the buying customer.
The news is not good. We've been warned that a few members of the judicial bar are salavating at the prospect; the ePublisher's customer can duplicate their purchased novel and share it with all their friends and family, or even resell it! They want somebody, particularly the ePublisher, to be responsible for protecting the Author's legal property rights.
So now the cost of proprietary software designed to hamper duplication pumps up the cost to produce, which ultimately increases the price for the reader, and we're right back where we started with a retail price unable to compete with paperbacks on the racks at the grocery store.
This, too, shall pass, as Grandmother likes to say.
Paperback customers can (and usually do) pass a book around to friends and family, and eventually may sell it back to a used book dealer. Audio books are often copied and shared just as easy as eBooks. It's not a new concept. Just a new slice of pie to fight over.
In the meantime, the industry will continue to struggle. We'll consider it part of our growing pains. And we'll keep working to be part of the solution coming at the other end.
