The Real Truth about Ebook Purchasing
PrintHow many books are on your “to read” list right now? 10? 20? More? The real truth about ebook purchasing—really about any content acquisition these days—is that we are so overwhelmed by choices that our to-be-experienced list is already quite overwhelmed. That doesn’t even take into account the revisiting of older content! So when publishers threaten to withhold ebook versions of new releases for a few months, who is it really hurting?
Joe Wikert, currently publisher at O’Reilly Media (with former executive experience at Wiley and Macmillan) shared his thoughts on the issue in a blog post yesterday that asked if you can force a customer to buy print instead of ebooks. Short answer? Maybe for bestsellers, but not otherwise. And the real reason for this shows up in the first comment: “As an avid (over 100 books a year) reader: If a book I want isn’t available in ebook format, and for a reasonable price, then I’ll just leave it on my TBR list until it is, and go on to reading all the other books on my list.”
I do not own a TV, and haven’t had that or cable TV service for a number of years now. And yet I don’t lack for content. Between Hulu for current shows (with a slight delay) and Netflix for a vast back catalog of movies and TV, my visual media needs are well met. Hollywood had better come out with a really good flick to get me into a movie theater for a first run viewing. Otherwise, I am more than happy to wait and rent it from iTunes. The same goes for books.
Not only do I have a rather large list of work and pleasure reading already lined up, there are the old favorites that I automatically loaded onto my reader (because duh … it has umpteen gigabytes of storage). Call it windowing, or call it the embargo it really is, if a publisher wants to delay my access to a book, what they really better be hoping is that I will still want it when they finally say it is okay for me to have it. In the same way that Hollywood better hope that I remember about their latest release in the brief rental window they allow via iTunes.
Frankly, it isn’t like my choices are all that limited. The real fight is to capture my attention long enough that I actually execute the purchase or place the hold at a library. Case in point: I received a print ARC of Ready Player One, but I handed it off to a colleague I though would really appreciate it. I guess he did, because I never got it back. Subsequently, it fell off my radar just enough that I never reacquired it. Yesterday, it popped back into my mind when I saw a blog posting about it winning an award. Random House shouldn’t be worrying about how many times extra to charge a library or whether or not to use a delayed release … they had better just hope I even remember their book exists!
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Comments
exactly.
publishers *still* haven’t figured out that they’re fighting for our eyes — and you make the good and true point that they are also fighting for their place in memory. my e-reader is loaded with samples, and i can’t remember why i downloaded *most* of those.
book-people buy *way* more books than they have time to read. this is the publishers’ bread & butter, but they still don’t fully get it. reading is important — and is indispensable to the *desire* to read, and the *intention* to read. which are in their turn even more important for book sales than actual reading. therefore publishers need to price their e-titles for impulse purchase, and make sure they’re available when the reader has finished reading, seeing or hearing the reviews. if we pause at the moment of impulse, we might remember that another title is actually higher on the tbr list, and put on the brakes. or we might buy the other title instead. or we might get annoyed when we see, after a couple more clicks, that the hardcover is a dollar less than the e-book — and go watch tv instead of buying anything at all.
embargoing new titles only compounds publishers’ risk that even those who fully intend to buy their books will miss them. and even if those titles do manage to stay on the list: instant gratification isn’t ‘instant’ if the book takes another n weeks to become available; and it isn’t gratifying if one is bringing up the rear — ‘finally’ reading it when it’s been out for months. even worse if it turns out to be a letdown, because that can color the entire book-browsing experience.
Very true. I was recently
Very true. I was recently working on a project selecting passages for a local reading assessment. One of the determining factors ended up being if the book felt overpriced in the iBookstore. Some great books fell to the side simply because the price caught my eye and made me rethink things.