As the market quickens for "e-books," the schedule for their release is slowing down.
Simon & Schuster announced Wednesday that the electronic editions for more than 30 works coming out in the first half of 2010 would not be available until four months after the hardcover. The affected books include novels by Don DeLillo and Mary Higgins Clark and a memoir by Karl Rove.
HarperCollins spokeswoman Erin Crum said the publisher plans to withhold the digital version of five to 10 titles per month, starting next year. And Hachette Book Group USA will delay a "wide selection" of e-books in 2010, spokeswoman Sophie Cottrell said.
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Publishers and authors have worried that e-books might hurt sales for hardcovers; Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and other online retailers commonly price top-selling e-releases at $9.99, which publishers say is too low and could cheapen the value of books overall.
Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy said Wednesday that the rise of e-books has led to a "cannibalizing" of new hardcover purchases.
"We believe that a large portion of the people who have bought e-readers are from the most devoted reading population," Reidy said. "And if they like the e-readers they are naturally going to convert because the e-books are so significantly less expensive."
E-books do expand the market for older books, Reidy added. Readers buying a new fiction work are inspired to buy many of the same author's previous books, or "backlist," in digital format because of the ease of ordering. Previously, buyers might have gone to a retail outlet and bought just one backlist title, she said.
With the digital market estimated at 2 to 5 percent of total sales, more than double from two years ago, e-books were held back for several of the fall's leading titles, including the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's "True Compass," Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" and Andre Agassi's "Open."
The e-book for the season's most popular release, Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol," came out at the same time as the hardcover and has sold about 200,000 copies, or about 5 percent of the book's total sales, nearly unthinkable before the rise of the Kindle and other digital devices.
"Authors get the most publicity at launch and need to strike while the iron is hot," Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener said Wednesday. "If readers can't get their preferred format at that moment, they may buy a different book or just not buy a book at all."
Publisher Doubleday said total sales in North America for Brown's novel have topped 4 million, a number that includes hardcover, audio and digital versions.
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I'm ok with this. At first, it sounded annoying (and I don't own an e-book device) but I started thinking about it in terms of hardcover vs. paperback. We aren't outraged that publishers withhold paperbacks for a certain length of time in order to maximize hardcover sales; why should this alternative & less expensive format be any different?
I don't know how the profit margins from hardcover to digital compare. Obviously, we would expect the production costs for hardcover books to be much higher than e-books, so it's possible the publishers make as much or more with each e-book sale. However, I suspect they're concerned about the collapse of their entire business model. If e-books eat into the hardcover business too much, it could make that aspect of the business unsupportable -- not enough volume to make it worthwhile to continue swallowing the overhead -- and if THAT happens, if you stop printing tangible books, you're conceding the entire market of people who don't use e-book devices.
It seems to me -- they HAVE to protect the hardcover market, at least until e-book penetration reaches much higher numbers. It's not (necessarily) about greed; it's also about the survival of the entire publishing industry.
lazarusl
Dec. 10, 2009 14:38pm
"...which publishers say is too low and could cheapen the value of books overall."
No, the crap books out there cheapen the value of books overall *cough* Sarah Palin *cough*. Also, if they're so worried about cheapened value, why are they allowing Walmart, Target and Amazon sell new hardcover books for $9.99? This is just the same BS the the music and movie industries claimed when allowing their material for electronic copies.
yogi
Dec. 10, 2009 16:30pm