Digitalise This: E-Books Struggling to Become Bestsellers

Is it possible to upload just about anything on the internet to make it into a online experience? That is not always easy to predict. What is easier to say though is that that anything which might be digitalised and put in a computer lends itself very well to an online business. That’s why industries in the music, video and computer software branches were among the first to experience significant change due to the efforts of companies like Napster and RealNetworks in the earlier years of the 21st Century.

For many marketers, electronic books, or e-books, also represented a field of promising possibilities. Ever since computers had been invented, written text have been stored on them, but technological advances increased the likelihood that the e-book business would grow. Hardware developments like small lightweight laptops, PDAs and dedicated reader devices like Rocket e-Book and Everybook Dedicated Reader provided plenty of options for storing and reading books.

On the, in retrospect premature, assumption that e-books would gain about 10% of all sales by 2007, significant investment were made in the industry. Publishers like Random House and Time Warner both set up digital imprints, while the retailer Barnes&Noble invested €18 million in MightyWords, a site where authors can sell their work directly to readers. However, just shortly afterwards, in some cases not even a year, many of these investments were being reversed.

Though e-books are still selling, their take up has not been nearly as fast as anticipated. There seems to be several factors behind this. Firstly, most e-book reading devices are still in their early stages of technological development, thus providing an inadequate user experience. Additionally, the need to buy the equipment necessary for using an e-book has proved unappealing for many people. Second, publishers have pursued a dubious strategy of selling e-books at higher prices than their paper equivalent. Third, there is no centralised online database for finding a digitalised book, so searching for them is hard. Finally, it is quite clear that many consumers love conventional printed books. They collect them, scribble on them, borrow and lend them.

This last reason is probably the most difficult factor that the e-book business will have to overcome. Recent data shows that sales continue to rise, reaching a level of €3.5 million in 2008, up 28% from the previous year. The best-selling authors includes Dan Brown and Kevin Ryan, but only time will tell if the printed book is going the same way as the vinyl disc.

Sources:

Chu, H. ‘Electronic Books: Viewpoints from Users and Potential Users’, Library Hi-Tech, 21 (3), 340-6.

Rao, S. ‘Familiarization of Electronic Books’, Electronic Library, 19 (4), 247-56.

Communications