Print power buyers make up 22 percent of the overall print book-buying population, and they drive 53 percent of print book purchases overall.

Meanwhile, e-book power buyers make up 35 percent of the overall e-book buying population, but they drive 60 percent of overall e-book purchases. In other words, about a third of the overall buyers drive two-thirds of overall purchases. Casual e-book buyers “are not pulling their weight” compared with casual print book buyers, Gallagher said.

via E-Book Bummer: Growth Slower Than Thought—‘Incremental, Not Exponential’ | mocoNews.

Hachette Ireland has promoted commissioning editor Ciara Doorley to the position of editorial director, effective immediately.

via Doorley new Hachette Ireland editorial director | The Bookseller.

EBooks  aren’t actually that exciting, so why are people buying them?

Why am I rubbish at selling books online?

Where the heck is my audience? They used to shop at Borders.

he’s got a refreshing perspective on some of those:

So why are we struggling so much to make a digital book look and feel like a book? I remember the overwhelming sense of disappointment, anti-climax and resignation that I felt when I first looked at an eBook, way back when, on the Iliad – a device thankfully confined to myth and legend (it had a STYLUS for god’s sake). Even now, working with a conversion supplier I’m proud to partner with, who does a good job of stretching the ePub and Kindle formats, whenever we get our eBooks back, we still often gaze misty-eyed at the print edition and wonder where the design went and that’s just on text-based product. If you are honest, you’ve felt the same way. We’ve had moments where we’ve tried to shoehorn full-colour books into reflowable epubs to see what would happen, got the files back and laughed out loud at ourselves for even bothering.

via 3 important questions about digital that nobody is asking. | FutureBook.

Not that he’ll be put out, but I disagree with the first half of his post pretty strongly in that I actually like ebooks as they are, simple text files. I don’t want enhancements.

There’s a peculiar, and seemingly pervasive, fear among publishers that the written word just isn’t compelling enough for their readers (one well addressed by James Bridle here) in the digital age. It’s something I just don’t understand. Afterall text is fine in print, why not in digital form?

The rest of it though, I’m mostly on board with and it speaks to the quick presentation on Niches & Communities I gave to publishers during the Pecha Kucha session at TOC Frankfurt in 2009.

Not, I stress, that I think ebooks are the end of all things book related as I myself wrote for Publishing Perspective some time ago:

THE critical concern should be developing an expertise in how to sell content in many different forms and at many different prices to different audiences. Publishers should be platform agnostic, selling wherever readers are willing to buy and not focusing if it is an e-book, an app, online access, segments, chapters, quotes, mash-ups, readings, conferences, or anything else (a point made Friday on Publishing Perspectives by Clive Rich).

Rather than expend their energy focusing on one format that may be fleeting, publishers need to focus on two long-term objectives: audience development and content curation. Neither of these are specific to digital activities, meaning that they will only serve to bolster the print side of the business as well, whether it declines rapidly or gradually.

Still, a good post that will no doubt generate discussion!
Eoin 

The one rolling in tomorrow has generated considerable coverage and is variously supposed to involve new authoring tools for ebooks, a revolution in the text-book industry or new distribution routes for self publishers.

Of course that is all fine except that there are some pretty good authoring tools for ebooks, not to mention many fine companies supplying such services. There are already several companies pursing the text-book market with a view towards radical change. Apple’s ebook distribution platform is frankly lacking (how many companies could get away with providing direct access to their self-publishing services ONLY to those who have a MAC*) so I hope personally that they decide to improve that side of their operation. Looking at their marketing image and text, I reckon I’ll be disappointed.

It is possible that Apple will launch something revolutionary tomorrow but I doubt it. I can’t help but feel though that Apple seems to be seen as a white knight by commentators inside and outside of the book publishing industry.

This is almost completely unlike Amazon, a company that has TRULY revolutionized the book publishing industry (or rather rode the wave of the changes revolutionizing the book publishing industry like no-one else), but is becoming the favourite target for attacks.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Amazon apologist (In fact I pointed to their long game fairly early on) I just think we need to keep our heads and a fairly hefty dollop of skepticism in hand when we discuss Apple. It has an impressive track record of being right, but its victories are Apple’s and rarely (except as a handy by-product) anyone else’s.

Keep that in mind tomorrow,
Eoin

* Yes, I know you can use an aggregator, but please, why is this a restriction?

I don’t believe that B&N has fully tuned into the economics of working in a network environment. For all the talk of the democratization of the Internet and the Long Tail, network economies tend to be winner-takes-all. Amazon is fast approaching a position where it becomes a virtual monopoly like other tech giants before it — Microsoft with Windows and Office, Facebook with social networking, Google for Web search, and Apple (through iTunes) for music consumption. All of these monopolies reach a plateau at some point, where other products and services begin to restructure the paradigm (e.g., the role of Cloud computing and mobile telephony in eroding Windows’ base), but while the party lasts, it is one heck of a profitable ride. It is far more urgent for B&N to prevent Amazon from reaching that point than it is for B&N to strive to achieve that point itself. B&N should be hell-bent on destroying the e-book paradigm, not on trying to control it.

via How Barnes & Noble Can Take a Bite Out of Amazon « The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 28,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

For example, it’s great to have new discovery tools, but for better or worse, actual book sales (both print and digital) still rely on identifiers and other metadata to facilitate an actual transaction. Subscriptions and rentals require the ability not only to ingest and display titles and the accompanying metadata, but also to serve content in multiple formats, to interface with accounting and royalty systems and to provide a data mining tools for publishers, among other things.

Direct-to-consumer businesses, both on the sales side and on the self-publishing side require skills not typically found in book publishing businesses, including customer acquisition, understanding the lifetime value of customers/users, customer service and the ability to deal with many small transactions rather than a relative handful of larger orders from more traditional wholesale and retail customers.

via Bait ‘n’ Beer | A blog about books, publishing and their intersection with technology. Among other things..

When unexpected things happen, Amazon, unlike most companies, does not immediately respond with knee-jerk PR damage control. As Bezos said during an interview a while back, the company is willing to be misunderstood and endure temporary PR blowback. The larger gameplan is too important.

Which is why the current furor over the price comparison app, and the related #OccupyAmazon reaction, is unlikely to elicit any dramatic responses from Amazon. Where other companies might respond with overwrought displays of contrition and dramatic conciliatory gestures, Amazon will likely do the minimum necessary, wait out the storm, and move on.  Amazon dealing with its market is the corporate equivalent of a patient, low-reactor parent dealing with a child throwing a tantrum.

More than any other corporation of the Internet age, Amazon embodies the emerging culture of business strategy. It is the General Electric of our times, and Bezos is the Jack Welch. When the definitive book on corporate strategy for the early Internet era is written, Amazon will be the main example, not Google, Apple, Microsoft or Facebook. Those are great companies too, but their greatness lies in other departments. As far as corporate strategy goes, they are mediocre players, not grandmasters.

via Why Amazon Is The Best Strategic Player In Tech – Forbes.

Bloomsbury has set up a literary events arm called Bloomsbury Institute, hosting literary salons, lectures and book clubs, as well as providing sessions for unpublished writers.

Claire Daly, previously festival co-ordinator for the Soho Literary Festival, has been appointed as Bloomsbury Institute events manager, with upwards of 30 events planned a year, in addition to new events and masterclasses expanding the established programme for unpublished writers offered under the Writers & Artists Yearbook brand.

via Bloomsbury Institute enters reader events market | The Bookseller.

As some authors have pointed out, even if you take advantage of Amazon’s self-publishing options to avoid having to get a traditional publishing deal, you’ve really just exchanged one corporate overlord for another. For most writers, the ideal would be an industry with multiple players — but unfortunately, their own publishers have helped make that even less of a possibility. And Amazon is the major beneficiary.

via How publishers gave Amazon a stick to beat them with — Tech News and Analysis.