Indies You’ve Been Googled!

The marriage of Google Books and Indie Bookstores tied the knot between, the bride who brought her wealth of stores and customers and the groom who brought his technology and ebooks. Was it an even relationship founded on common understanding and shared belief in each other, or merely a hastily arranged mis-marriage born more of convenience than love and probably never consummated?

This week Google started divorce proceedings based on the indies not delivering sales.

Unrequited love, often drive the groom to seek pastures new and in this case Google has declared that it will start to sell e-books solely through its recently launched Google Play beginning January 31, 2013. Will it makes the envisaged sales it believes it can do better on its own or will it find the market will has moved on further and Google is not the ebook force it once envisaged?

The bride will no doubt be unindicted by new suitors hungry to convert the dowry on offer. However, will these wanabees fair any better, offer a true relationship or once again follow in the footsteps of Google when their expectations are not met. It is easy to see a line of ‘white label’ suitors who all will offer books and technology. How will any of these differ from what went before? It is often said that if one rushes on the rebound from one broken relationship to another, with the next one being to someone very similar to the first.

When we wrote the Brave New World report in 2006 we saw the opportunity for booksellers to embrace and deliver the digital opportunity. Then it was possible to see strong partnerships that could have matured, but today the landscape is very different and although the pie has grown significantly the opportunity to cut a sizable slice of it has diminished for many. We did discuss the opportunity for bookstore to build their own platform and take control of their own destiny but it was felt that marriage was more rewarding than remaining single. In hindsight we wish we would have been more forceful and argued the case stronger as a booksellers digital repository tied to stores and consumers would have had strong market appeal and perhaps would have attracted a more equal suitor or offered a stronger relationship.

The opportunity is not lost, nor should anyone dismiss the wealth on offer, but it takes strong leadership and vision now to move the indies digitally forward. The UK and US do not have the security of the Centraal Boekhuis relationship but can learn much from it. The stores themselves need to recognise that white ‘label stores’ only offer a commission not a marriage or partnership. It’s somewhat ironic that the two parties, libraries and bookstores, that are now playing the dating game, are potentially still the strongest bodies if they can the pull all the pieces together.

Would You Buy an eBook Reader Off This Man?

When we saw the promotional billboard outside Waterstones store in Bath we thought we should see what the consumer experience would be.

We looked through ground floor but couldn’t see any ebook readers, so we looked at the store directory that had no reference to ebooks or ereaders. We went upstairs, we went outside to look if it said where they were, we went to the basement and again nothing. So we went to the ground floor and asked a staff member and was told, ‘They are over the other side to the left of the checkouts.’

The member of staff obviously was too busy to come with us on the short journey across the store but we proceeded by ourselves and found the stand. The area was some six foot wide with a top section with some POS display, a shelf with some five ereaders and a lower section full of accessories and boxed readers.

There were a number of customers hovering around, some curious and others waiting to be served on the checkouts, but there were no staff and the readers looked somewhat lost but were firmly secured to the shelf. Some people left and others came, but no staff appeared to want to proactively sell ereaders. We played with a couple of the devices but even these appeared not to want to perform. We were only feet away from the checkouts whose operators now having no customers to serve didn’t want to leave their counter to help. So we went to the staff member some feet away who was busy filling shelves and asked if someone could help and to his credit he said he could.

We won’t go through the questions asked and the answers given but there was no attempt to demonstrate the devices and the salesperson made some basic mistakes on simple questions and clearly knew something but not a lot. He did know that Amazon Kindle was different and the Sony reader was exclusive to Waterstones, but that was about it. The experience was not compelling and given our own knowledge was both misleading and a turn off.

To make sure our judgement was fair my wife tried again a bit later and this time she knew where the find them!.

A different salesperson offered help and said that the in-store experience was going to change with new online access. He pointed out that the store had an expert. but the expert appeared to be being more productively employed working on the tills. One of the devices batteries were flat, not a good representation of battery life. One device was out of stock so they had been told to even switch it off even though the billboard outside stated two we out of stock. The POS was not consistent and not all devices were even priced! On ebook pricing he said that there no VAT on books, but there is on ebooks and that because there is no transport or printing. ebooks would be cheaper and came up with a weird price point of £6.50!

Frankly, Waterstones staff may be passionate about books but don’t appear to be very passionate about ebooks and also out of their depth in being able to pro actively sell even five, sorry four, ereaders.

Has Christmas Come Too Early For eBooks?

The money appears to be on the ebook, ebook readers and tablets being the Xmas gift this year, so we thought it timely to cast a quick view on what is on offer.

Amazon have announced that you can now give a Kindle ebook to anyone as a gift and neither you nor the receiver of your gift needs to have a Kindle, just an Amazon account for you and an email address for the recipient. The ebooks can be read from Kindle apps on iPhones, iPads, Android and Blackberry phones and both Macs and PCs. You now just select the ebook you want to gift click "Give as a Gift". You will enter the recipient’s email address and optionally, their name and a message and place your order. Amazon will also enable unwanted ebooks to be exchange it for an Amazon.com gift card.

Kobo is releasing also enabling customers to buy e-Readers, eBooks, and accessories and gift them to friends and family. These too are sent via a personalized Kobo Holiday email and delivered on the date they select . You can also to load up a giftcard with a particular numerical value and deliver it electronically.

Waterstones sells ebooks but gifting them appears beyond their capabilities. They do however have a deal on getting the VAT back on a Sony reader. As those in the UK will be aware VAT will increase on January 1st from 17.5% to 20% in the UK so the deal looks attractive until you read the reclaim process which isn’t exactly instant!

Perhaps someone at Barnes and Noble can clarify, but we were unable to easily find how to send an ebook as a gift and stopped at the credit card check, so presume it is not possible today. Their Christmas gifts section fully covered every physical gift but ebooks appears to be outside Santa’s sack. Borders were very similar with ‘gifts for ebook lovers’ restricted to readers and gift cards. Surely an ebook lover will already have a reader and why can’t we give them an ebook? WHSmiths didn’t even mention the word ebooks in their ‘gift, games and toys’ section.

We thought we should look at the publishers who are now wishing to open up a new direct to consumer market. Penguin UK state on their FAQ No 13; ‘At this time, eBooks cannot be sent as gifts. eBook orders can only be sent to the email address on your penguin.co.uk customer account.’ We gave up on Penguin’s US site which some would suggest certainly wasn’t consumer centric. We tried Rbooks Random House UK’s bookstore and instantly realised what the difference is between retail sites and publisher ones.

There are many other offers in the market place, but it is clear that although the market is starting to respond to ebooks, many ebook resellers have some way to go to get into the gifting into the spirit.

Digital LibraryWorld Part 4: The Hodge Potch

Yesterday the UK government lawyers stated that they believe that public libraries would be legally able to charge for e-books that are downloaded remotely under a library service. This may be the legal position, but what about the moral or social position? More importantly should access to information and literary works be paid for twice. once by taxes and secondly by readers? Should a subsidised public service be allowed to compete unfairly with commercial services? Why should physical books be lent free and yet digital charged within the same service?

Margaret Hodge may have established the legal ground , but that doesn’t excuse her attempts to profit from the public library service as a political football. with little or no regard to the potential damage and the implications to the publishing and bookselling industry. Margaret Hodge will be in effect privatising the library service by the back door and opening the door so wide open to encourage even more radical and disjoined thinking. Today we face a real ‘Hodge Potch’ of ministerial action from a lame duck government and a personal in search for eye-catching headlines for votes in an election year.

It is important that we debate the commercial versus public service question and why one medium should be charged for whilst others aren’t for the same work?

If libraries are allowed to compete head to head with resellers, the fight will be created that never previously existed and it will be one that is both unfair and unjust. Public libraries occupy prime civic locations and will be given even greater preferences than the low rent that charity shops selling books enjoy today. Staff will be paid out of the public purse, the services and systems will be paid out of public purse, the content will be bought out of the public purse and the access will be paid for by the public. Even VAT will flow to the public coffers!

We then have the next Hodgism allowing libraries to sell downloads not rent them. In doing so they will compete unfairly head to head, not just with Amazon, but the very fabric of the booktrade and every bookstore.

Libraries have a role, a community place both in the physical and digital worlds. They need to go mobile and digital. They need to create a social layer of information access and service and not just be seen as a place housing books on shelves. They need to be creative and innovative. This should not be at the expense of the booktrade, publishing industry and authors livelihoods. What is the objective?

When we first saw the Barnes and Noble superstore in the90s, with their cavernous space, coffee shops, newspaper racks and casual retail space we immediately thought they were libraries. When the Espresso POD machines first appeared, we immediately thought what a great community hub libraries could give them ands the service and support they could give local bookstores. When we first saw music , audio and PC in libraries, we thought why not. However, what went wrong was that public libraries were starved of the true investment required to transform them, they struggled to modernise and what money was given was often at the expense of buying books. They were often lost with little direction and staff often found themselves torn between being civil servants, information officers and bookmen. There is a need to change, but change should be one that understands the publishing framework and interdependencies that exist today and not ignores them in blind idealism.

Today we must debate and understand the implications of ‘free to rent’ versus ‘buy to purchase’. If we tip the scales too far to one extreme, we could undermine the fabric of what we are trying to encourage – writing and reading. Today we musty agree how creativity is rewarded and although PLR offers a good safety net , expanding this without a further increase in real money, merely dilutes, and does not encourage and reward creativity.

We must now ask what the role of the library is and how we build it into the digital future in a balanced way that encourages creativity, writing, learning, reading and one that builds community and social harmony. The PLR funding and reward system has to be fully included within any change. We talk often about the public private initiatives and closer relationships and there is a real need to explore these in any change. We must avoid actions that can destroy one in order that we save the other.

If the bookstores were to disappear because of commercial competition, we as society will have played a part in it. If bookstores were to disappear because of governmental action, then we as society have ay best let idealism and at worst greed overcome years of establishing a social service. Creating a tax on reading is not what public libraries were established to do. Reading is reading and to condone charging for digital but retain it for physical books, makes little if no sense.

At a time that the government states that access to the internet and even broadband are become fundamental rights for 21st century citizens, to charge for to read digital books is morally wrong.

Brave New World Revisited Part 1: Are we all Participating

There have been some interesting debates in the blogshere and over emails about what appears to be the threat of the new entrants and the overall balance of the publishing marketplace. These are not new and were well documented in our Brave New World report close to 3 years ago. What is now new is that the reality is starting to happen, changes are starting to be seen and the industry is now starting to wake up and smell the coffee.

So what are we talking about? Today we look briefly at the independents’ digital opportunities

First, there is contrary to many beliefs a real place for the independent bookseller in the digital marketplace but they need to want to participate and be allowed to participate. There are no free lunches and natural extensions of the physical world. Equally those who believe that the independents can’t participate or wish to steal their market better wake up and think about how they bridge the revenue gap – if you take out your existing channel you take out your existing revenues. You may not like who you have to do business with tomorrow.

Second, unless the digital divide between those who can and those who aren’t allowed is closed then the digital divide could come home to bite all. Publishing has long been said by some to be like spread betting you place many bets and hope that the overall receipts will outweigh the bets placed. When you narrow the market then spread bets become harder and mistakes a lot more painful. By retaining and supporting the existing channel we can ensure options are not closed down. The digital age gives us the ability to create a level playing field but all too often we choose the technology to narrow and close down the field.

Third, Digital is good and can live alongside physical. They are only mutually exclusive if we want them to be. Yes, digital may reduce the effectiveness of a general offer but it can also reduce the effectiveness of a vertical one. Those who advocate either or, do not respect that the world is not binary today, nor tomorrow. Digital offers booksellers and librarians the real opportunity to engage, add value and develop their communities but if all is achieved is a ‘white label’ web site they have failed miserably. That doesn’t preclude them from selling white label stock, that’s a given, but giving away their customers or treating them as mere distant buyers is not a wise course to pursue.

Fourth, price matters. Of course consumers will always be drawn to price but this tends to be for know items not browsing. So the key is to capture the browser, the impulse buy and keep hold of him and use the bookselling skills to sell to him irrespective of price but built on trusted relationship.

The Brave New World report has so far failed to deliver its promise. Some may say it couldn’t work and the cards were stacked against it, others will point to the infamous BA conference walk-out and the bad positioning of some of the follow-up process, others to the power of the new entrants, some would suggest the folly of exclusive and marginalised deals etc. We believe that only today with the imminent roll out of inclusive and not exclusive services such as Gardners Digital Warehouse in the UK, do we see a opportunity for all to participate. However, even as we write some may suggest that there are rules set for some that are not being allowed for others.