Apr
20
The Wizardry of Ease: Why ebooks are Catching Air
April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Guest Bloggger Kassia Krozser (K2) of Book Square writes to LiveWires about the ebook industry and how knowing your customer is knowing your market:
Know Your Customer, Know Your Market
Let’s get this out of the way first: I have no patience for people who, upon entering a discussion about digital books, declare (and I paraphrase), “The book ain’t broken. We don’t need no stinkin’ ebooks.” The question of whether or not ebooks should exist in a world where a perfectly good book product exists is pointless. Ebooks do exist, people do buy them, and people do read them.
The early adopter of digital books is female, ages 30 – 50. This customer buys an average of five books a month, reads even more. While she currently buys as many print as digital books per month, anecdotal evidence suggests the digital purchases are increasing while print is decreasing. Consider this customer and you’ll understand why.
You’ll also understand the future of ebooks.
When I talk and write about this subject, I have a specific reader in mind. She’s 35, lives in the Midwest, has two kids. She also has a husband, a full-time job, active social life. In her spare time, she shuttles between soccer practice, piano lessons, the dry cleaners, the grocery store, and, if she’s lucky, everything falls into place and the house is clean and organized at the end of the day. Basically, this reader is a fairly typical wife and mother.
The profile of the average digital book reader, I’m sure you’ll notice, is very similar to to the profile of your typical fiction reader.
She buys and reads digital books — and has done so for far longer than the mainstream media realizes — because of the advantages they offer. If she’s a Kindle customer, she gets the convenience (and hazard!) of wireless downloads, meaning she can buy a book from anywhere, including the soccer field. Do not discount this power. A conversation about a good book, interest piqued, purchase made.
Month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year, ebook sales are rising. So far, for most publishers, these numbers are a less-than 1% blip on the P&L. Experts disagree on when total sales will achieve what I like to call “counts toward the bonus pool” levels, but they agree it will happen.
What this means, according to my crystal ball, is that your typical ebook customer will be buying nearly all her books in digital format. Frequent travelers will be upping their purchases due to ease (and the not-to-be-underestimated ability to carry far more books than current luggage weight restrictions allow). New types of devices will seduce non-traditional readers. The Plastic Logic reader seems ideally suited to news and magazine content (oh, for colored e-ink!); once you touch it, you also see that it’s almost designed for business applications.
Yes, I am saying that not only do you have the opportunity to convert readers to a less-costly (not free!) format, but you also have the opportunity to suck in other reading demographics. As long as a few simple rules are followed:
Consider Cost: Readers understand that digital books are “different”. Publishers and authors need to understand this, too. New market, smart pricing strategy. Would you rather sell one book every now and then or many books frequently?
Portability Matters: Go back and review my typical d-book reader. Notice how she’s rarely in one place for very long. She needs the ability to move books between devices with minimal hassle. Make this customer happy and you’ll earn that coveted word-of-mouth praise. Make her unhappy…
DRM Doesn’t Stop Pirates: The additional cost you pay for Digital Rights Management schemes might make you feel better, but it doesn’t stop piracy. It does, however, frustrate your customers like you can’t believe (bored? do Google and Twitter searches on DRM). Did you know that various DRM schemes are turning law-abiding, legal book purchasers into hackers? Oddly, readers aren’t opposed to DRM per se, but they have violent reactions to how it’s implemented.
Day and Date Releases: If not earlier. I received word that a friend’s book is now shipping from Amazon (and some people have it in hand already), but when I went to buy a Kindle edition, I had to pre-order. What? Does the publisher think this is a good idea? Old-school ideas about windows don’t work in this new market.
Finally, Think Reader First: In every meeting, as part of every decision, consider how your publishing choices impact the person who buys books. This is a different mindset for most publishing professionals, but starting with the reader first changes your perspective on doing business. For the better.
I’d like to close with one last belief: digital books will not replace print books, at least in the foreseeable future. For many reasons, from technology to demographics, digital and print comprise reading choices. Readers choose format based on a variety of personal factors. Sometimes it even makes sense to own a book in both digital and print (oh, for print/digital bundles of cookbooks!). Give readers choices, make them happy, and reap the rewards.
Kassia Krozser (K2)
“Kassia has never had an opinion she didn’t wish to express, nor has she ever been shy about telling the emperor that his clothes are, well, transparent. This is her way of expressing love, and she lavishes all of her adoration on the publishing industry because, like a child who needs firm, corrective guidance, publishers and writers need Booksquare.”