Tag Archives: Digital Publishing

Go Read This | Kindle to Generate $5.42 bln Revenue in 2011 for Amazon: Analyst – International Business Times

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How do you like them apples? Very much indeed. Even if this is out by say 20-30% the numbers are impressive!

First mover seems to have an advantage in this game. Those headline figures are pretty eyewatering. Nearly $8 billion by 2012? What’s more look at those margins circa 25% by 2012. Who wouldn’t take that?

“Since mid-2009, competition in the eBook market has been intensifying but, in our view, Kindle remains the most compelling eBook device and a material contributor to Amazons non-core business growth. In our view, in 2011 Kindle can generate revenue in excess of $5.42 billion and $1.21 billion in gross profit; by 2012 we expect at least $7.96 billion in total revenue and $2.00 billion in gross profit,” said Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at Caris.

Book titles reached 945,026 in May 2011, increasing by 47,000 over April 2011 5 percent month-over-month increase and by more than 740,000 since Kindle’s first anniversary.

via Kindle to Generate $5.42 bln Revenue in 2011 for Amazon: Analyst – International Business Times.

Go Read This | Ed Victor sets up publishing imprint

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UPDATE: I neglected to include the link to The Bookseller whose original reporting I quote below. The link is now included!

As if the signs were not clear enough that the world of trade publishing is changed forever, Ed Victor comes along and proves it pretty definitely. It’s not the scale, which is modest, more it is the fact that this kind of operation is but one of many sure to crop up over the next few years. They makes sense, they will no doubt bring in more money for agents and authors and they are fine ideas.

From an author’s perspective I wonder on the 50/50 split of proceeds though. For one, the new operation will be by far best business at an agency in terms of margin (after all, once the digitization costs are repaid the money coming in will be almost entirely profit). What’s more, Victor makes clear no extra staff will be recruited and agencies don’t have the overheads a publisher does. Given that and given the likely emergence of a 50/50 split with publishers, why would an author settle for 50/50 with their agent?

In any case, fascinating move:

The agency is not taking on any new staff, but will work with digital production company Acorn to create and distribute the content in the correct format. The agency has also retained J K Rowling’s joint publicist Mark Hutchinson to market the titles through social media sites.
The titles will all be available on online booksellers including Amazon.co.uk and the iBookstore, with Victor confirming he intends to adopt the agency model. He said: “I think it will all be on the agency model, we’ll give up 30%, then we will give up another percentage to Acorn”. The POD side will be through Gardners, with print carried out by Antony Rowe.
He said net receipts will be divided on a 50/50 basis between author and agency, once production costs have been recouped out of the first receipts. This is in contrast to the 25% royalty rate understood to be offered by most major publishers.
Victor described the lines separating different roles within the industry as being “blurred”, and, looking ahead, comparing publishers and agents’ ability to compete in a changing industry, he said: “I’m certainly lighter on my feet and maybe that’s the answer for the future.”

Via - Ed Victor sets up publishing imprint | The Bookseller

Quick Link | Kobo Rides the Shockwave of Interest in E-books: Tech News and Analysis «

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Interesting stats on users and the time it has taken to acquire them.

“It took us 10 months to get to a million users, and about 90 days to get to 2 million,” CEO Michael Serbinis said in a recent interview. “Getting to 3 million took about 60 days, and we are close to 4 million now.” Kobo — which is majority-owned by Canadian bookseller Indigo Books — was launched in late 2009, and is now the number three player in most of the major markets it participates in, Serbinis said. The company recently closed a new $50-million round of financing.

via Kobo Rides the Shockwave of Interest in E-books: Tech News and Analysis «.

Go Read This | In which competition fails to be perfect « Courtney Milan’s Blog

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A very fine piece on value, price and economics in ebooks:

Too true. I may have a legal monopoly over books by Courtney, but there are decent economic substitutes for books by Courtney. The problem is that (a) there are a small number of really good economic substitutes and (b) all substitutes are imperfect, with some substitutes being more imperfect than others.

For instance, I have a vast amount of empirical data demonstrating that at least some people would rather pay $7.99 to read my book than spend $0.00 to read Moby Dick for free. This is because Moby Dick is a really, really bad economic substitute for a historical romance. I like to think that even in historical romance, there is no perfect substitute for a book by Courtney. Heck, my books aren’t perfect substitutes for each other. Most people don’t read Unveiled a second time and say, “Well, now I feel just as good as if I’d read Unclaimed, so why bother?”

via In which competition fails to be perfect « Courtney Milan’s Blog.

Yet Another Bloomsbury Property Goes Digital

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There’s a paragraph on Bloomsbury’s Strategy page on their website that always grabs me. It reads:

A key element to Bloomsbury’s strategy is to broaden the base on which it acquires and exploits intellectual property. This began in 1994 with retaining paperback rights and moving into children’s publishing. With the advent of the internet, the company identified a growing demand for quality on-line reference content which culminated in the development of our first major database, The Encarta World English Dictionary.

The reason it grabs me is that you can see the company put that paragraph into action very regularly. The latest is Reeds Nautical Almanac from their A&C Black division (the location of some of their most interesting properties).

I wrote before about Bloomsbury that:

It further occurs to me that nearly all the moves place them in a position to exploit the brand potential of all these properties and to do that through new digital avenues if and when they choose to

That still holds true and when you check the site out, you do begin to wonder why it wasn’t done before, but that’s not the point. This is strategy in action before our eyes. What’s more, it’s a sensible strategy that’s moving physical products and customers towards digital models in an un-hyped way.

It shows the value of intellectual property that has something that can be made available as an online service as well as a print product. Sure it brings its own worries and concerns, but it also offers opportunities and real hope for a future for publishing and publishers.

Maybe it should be more hyped! Or maybe more publishers should copy them!
Eoin