Quite a bit in this article could do with revision, but the central point remains completely valid:
But the industry, despite notable and impressive exceptions, is still avoiding the inevitable accommodation and embrace of the Internet AS THE PLATFORM. As a body, we are ignoring the implications of digital change and seeking short and medium-term patches at the expense of long-term success.
Great piece by Rebecca Smart in The Bookseller on niche:
The migration to online purchasing of print books, and then to e-books, means that the buying of books is now about processes of search and recommendation, rather than browse and display, and this leads to a focus on specific interest areas and trusted authorities. If you publish for a wide range of interests, promotion of each individual book is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive.
I downloaded the free version of Osprey’s The Military History Quiz App last week and I just wanted to give it a quick word of praise*.
Simply put, it’s excellent. It combines some excellent design with great questions and a very clever in-App purchase set of options.
First the design which is smooth and consistent and looks good throughout the app. It has a sufficiently martial theme to keep the military-history nerd in me happy.
The questions are tough enough, even in the free section, to challenge both the novice and the knowledgeable history buff. As they progress though they sure do get harder!
And it’s that progression that makes the in-App buying options so smart. For only €0.79 you can upgrade the levels to reach 1 Star General status. After that it’s €2.39 a level OR you can choose to pay €5.99 for every level in one go (the levels go to 4 Star General) including the first one.
I have to admit, the App punctured many of my illusions about my knowledge base when it comes to military history, but I guess that’s a small downside when you learn so much along the way!
It’s a fine piece of work, it works smoothly and I hope it generates huge sales for Osprey who have a real can-do, will-do, try-anything spirit that’s hard not to admire in the modern publishing environment.
I’m sure they are working on the Sci-Fi & Fantasy version of the quiz too (Osprey also owns Angry Robot, a relatively new Sci-Fi & Fantasy imprint).
Eoin
*It’s probably fair to note that I know one or two of the folks that work at Osprey well enough to have a chat at the odd Book Fair or over Twitter, but I’ve never worked for the company. I’ve written about them before a few times though.
I disagree with some of this, in fact with a lot of it, though it does seem that when Evan describes the mechanics of those who have moved to digital reading, he is on the money!
While I see the logic behind this understanding – I posit a slightly more nuanced definition of what is happening: Ebooks aren’t cannibalizing print books — consumers with ebook reading devices are, as a rule, no longer buying print books. Subtle? Yes, but from a commercial publishing point of view this is a crucial difference between seeing a direct correlation between ebooks and print books and understanding what happens to a customer when they make the switch to reading devices.
via Ebooks Don’t Cannibalize Print, People Do « Black Plastic Glasses.
Don’s not wrong here, which is why I expect the majors will dominate those spaces where enhanced ebooks see success and lose out in the space where smaller players and self publishers can actually play the game.
And that means one of two things: (1) Either you need a sure-fire blockbuster title with a built in audience or (2) you need to be able to charge a pretty high price to make the P&L have a chance of working. I know…freaking bean-counters always in the way of doing cool things. So, yes, education can work (scale will deliver enough units), technical, children’s and some DIY can work (the enhancements add enough demonstrable value to carry a premium price), but fiction and most trade non-fiction? Without a brand (I’m thinking Star Wars and things of that ilk), it’s tough for me to see how the unit sales numbers will work, even if the costs of creating and producing the title decline, as they likely will. And I’m not one to believe that readers will consistently pay premiums for enhanced content that’s in the ‘nice to have’ but not ‘must have’ category.
Eoin Purcell's Blog 