7 ms·

The Flattening of Ebook Sales

51 points by razorburn 13y ago

booruguru 13y ago
I don't understand why we keep having this conversation when the answer couldn't be any more obvious...avid readers represent a minority of the population. And while avid readers represent a big chunk of book sales...many books are purchased by people who rarely buy books at all (let alone for pleasure). When purchasing an ebook reader is as trivial as buying a pocket calculator...then you'll see a massive shift in the proportion of ebook sales vs print sales. (Also, it would be enormously helpful if ebooks could be purchased WITHOUT a credit card...afterall kids buy books too.)
- gojomo 13y ago
  Or as Steve Jobs put it: "People don't read anymore."
  - AsymetricCom 13y ago
    and he didn't have a problem with that.
    - Tichy 13y ago
      He still bothered to produce a biography of himself.
clumsysmurf 13y ago
The article cites a number of reasons why this could be the case. I would also like to throw in DRM & proprietary formats. First, you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too. That would make me nervous if I was heavily invested in some ecosystem. But another interesting theory, not mentioned in the article, is that there may be a difference in reading speed and comprehension between paper and screens (although I have seen conflicting data on this). http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-paper-screens http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-pap... One fascinating idea from this article is that "As far as our brains are concerned, however, text is a tangible part of the physical world we inhabit." Personally, I comprehend information much better when its in some format like PDF which is not re-flowable. But most books these days, available from Amazon or Apple, do not meet that description. Maybe I'm an odd one, but my ideal reading device would probably be some 13" tablet that could display a whole PDF page at a time.
- kabdib 13y ago
  > [if] you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too. I break DRM on all the Kindle content I buy. If I couldn't break the DRM, I wouldn't buy it. I also try to support non-DRM books by buying them preferentially. Baen books, for instance. There are other non-DRM publishers. And no, I do /not/ share. I have a Kindle DX for reading papers (e.g., from the ACM). I haven't tried reading conference papers on a tablet (e.g., iPad) mainly because I don't have one, and while I wonder if the experience is better, I like the fact that the Kindles don't have to be recharged every day. The fact that I can go a week or more without recharging makes them a lot more book-like to me.
  - AsymetricCom 13y ago
    Some Kindle titles have disabled DRM. its an option the author can set. obviously, few choose to do so. I imagine Cory Doctorow does.
    - mkr-hn 13y ago
      You can't disable DRM in KDP if you upload a book with it enabled, so authors can't change their mind later.
GabrielF00 13y ago
One of the most interesting things to come to light in the anti-trust decision against Apple was that Amazon was happily buying bestselling eBooks from publishers for $13 and reselling them for $9. The publishers preferred the opposite: for Apple and Amazon pay them $9 and then resell the books for $13. The publishers WANTED the eBook market to slow down - they didn't want people to stop buying hardcovers from Barnes and Noble for $30 and they didn't want people thinking that a new bestselling novel was only worth $10.
ekianjo 13y ago
Well ebooks prices are ridiculous in the first place. I only buy ebooks when the price is not fixed （bundles） and without drms. Other that that, there is so muc free stuff to download from the public domain, i dont get bored. And i still buy physical books, too.
- mrmondo 13y ago
  I'm with you on the no-DRM, if I do buy a DRM eBook I have to be able to remove the DRM (defeating the purpose).
  - rdl 13y ago
    The DRM which genuinely vexes me is Audible, so I make a point of ripping (+++) anything I buy, because it actually makes the works difficult for me to play otherwise (it blocks output from the iPhone except in analog, so it doesn't play on my vehicle dock. I end up having to rip and put them on SD cards to play directly on the car's audio system.)
nopinsight 13y ago
1. Most of the current e-book contents & formats (Kindle, epub, etc.) have not yet fully exploited the capabilities of the digital medium. I'd say we are not more than 30-40% (or less) there, even just considering the current level of technology. 2. Habits are hard to change. What you are most accustomed to when growing up, you tend to continue unless the advantages of change is overwhelming. Current e-book formats do not yet offer huge advantages over paper books, thus many adults keep buying paper ones. (Some advantages, like physical storage space & weight, are big, but confined to specific situations, say during travel, as mentioned in the article.) 3. New generations of kids are more and more distracted by digital interactivity and communications. I suspect the average amount of long-form reading per person in the developed world has declined over time. (Does anyone have an estimate?) Long-form narratives like paper books and current e-books cannot now hold attention of most casual readers, especially the young. Even though I did not grow up with a computer and read many books as a child, I now read quite a bit less books and many more short items on the Web (articles, blogs, forum posts, etc.). 4. Over time, when the new generation of digital natives grows up and technology progresses, e-books would gradually but surely dominate the reading market for all types of books. More importantly, popular non-fictions will be developed as a new kind of e-books, which cannot even be fully presented in the traditional narrative form. Al Gore's Our Choice [1] is just an example of the first generation's interactive e-books. [1] http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/ http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/
- girvo 13y ago
  In response to (3) -- I read a LOT as a kid, too, and I also stopped as I got older. Until I got a kindle that is: now I read every day. I'm quite happy about that. And the browser in the PaperWhite is really handy, when I'm on the go ill, often leave the tablet to home and use my kindle to read HN or The Verge. Just a random anecdote :)
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  Not a big fan of the interactive e-book paradigm in general, but it certainly has its place. long form reading is not something I anticipate going away.
pcunite 13y ago
I recently bought 7 books. The price difference for a PDF file was sometimes more than a real physical copy. For whatever reason I was not willing to pay even the same amount. So, into my online shopping cart went 7 print copies ... go figure.
- Tichy 13y ago
  I feel the same, but lately most ebooks I looked at were a couple of EUR cheaper than their paperback counterparts. I think the publishers/vendors are learning.
ps4fanboy 13y ago
every single time I look to get an eBook they are always more expensive than a real copy plus shipping.
cgrubb 13y ago
I'm with John Carmack that really it is just better having everything in the cloud: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1sjRD7NSec#t=3m57s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1sjRD7NSec#t=3m57s So ebooks only growing at 5% with 25% market share surprises me. At that rate it will take ebooks 10 years to draw even with print: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve%5B0.25+*+1.05%5En+%3D%3D+0.75*.95%5En%2C+n%5D http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve%5B0.25+*+1.05%5En...
qq66 13y ago
I think this is mostly price driven. The initial frenzy over Ebooks was the promise of volume - 2000 books on my Kindle! Which has faded as people realize that it would cost $200,000 to fill the Kindle, and the result is far less useful/general-purpose than a printed book (no loans, sales, requires battery, lasts shorter amount of time)
bd 13y ago
Author of the original Association of American Publishers report posted a comment to Washington Post article with rebuttal of this interpretation of their data: As the person who produced the AAP report quoted here, I'm not given enough characters in Comments to point out the countless errors in this piece. It misunderstands our basic data and, since our reports only track current vs previous year, quotes figures that come out of nowhere and are unrecognizable. It misses the widely-reported fact that Q1 2013's overall eBook growth slowed because of the Children's/Young Adults category: The Q1 lead-up to the Hunger Games film in March 2012 drove C/YA eBooks to extraordinary triple-digit growth; minus a comparable blockbuster in Q1 2013, C/YA slowed. Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction eBooks, however, grew 14% in the same time '12-'13 period. Also, an essential point is missed: These are not retail sales numbers but, instead, publishers' net revenues coming from all their distribution channels including Institutions (e.g. schools, libraries) and Book Fairs. That also means, for instance, that with Borders' financial troubles no longer a factor, publishers have seen their net revenue from print stabilize which, in turn, affects their overall percentage earned from eBooks in these reports. Finally, the piece's premise that an eBook is an eBook is an eBook is wrong. Each category within consumer books - Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction, Children's/YA and Religious Presses - has moved into e-formats at different points in time. Adult F/NF was the pioneer, starting years ago, and that growth has become more consistent as it's matured. C/YA, which entered later, is now in the midst of enormous transition. Religious Presses are more newcomers to eBooks. Lumping these distinct categories together and making broad generalizations makes little sense. We release highlights of all our reports to media (including the Post). We're happy to share. But an article based on a non-journalistic blog that itself has only second-hand information does a disservice to readers, authors and publishers. Andi Sporkin Association of American Publishers http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/08/e-book-sales-are-leveling-off-heres-why/?commentID=washingtonpost.com/ECHO/item/1376001588-174-705 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/08/e...
- dmix 13y ago
  This is proper journalism ^, getting analysis from people who didn't just read the abstract.
  - 13y ago
mrmondo 13y ago
This is really interesting, because me, my partner, colleges at work and friends are all buying more ebooks than we've ever done before. All our work books are now digital and the older generations in my family all now own kindles (and use them).
shmerl 13y ago
> The shift from e-readers to tablets is putting a damper on e-book sales. I didn't understand this part. Why would tablets usage reduce e-books sales if you can read e-books on your tablet all the same? If the author means the DRM issue, then it's not really the case, since there are many DRM free e-books sold already, and even with DRMed ones, DRM can be removed in most cases in order to access them on any device you want.
- cryowaffle 13y ago
  His point is that people will own an ebook reader or a tablet. If they own an ebook reader and they turn it on, 100% of their time will be reading a book. If they own a tablet and turn it on they have lots of options, maybe only 10% of the time they will read an ebook. The argument hinges on the idea that people pick up tablets only so many hours of the day and then decide what to do. I think it's flimsy because using a tablet is a different act than wanting to read a book.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    Yeah, I'd say if you want to read an e-book and you have a tablet - you would use your tablet for that. So I don't see how this can reduce your interest in buying e-books.
    - michaelt 13y ago
      Because instead of buying two e-books while traveling, you buy one then go on Facebook/HN/Angry Birds.
      - shmerl 13y ago
        Your need to buy some particular e-book shouldn't depend on whether you need to access HN or not. So I don't see any relation there.
        michaelt 13y ago
tommaxwell 13y ago
I actually find myself buying more and more ebooks lately. I find it really convenient for various reasons, including Whispersync (which is quite useful). Also I travel a lot and am in the process of finishing multiple books, so it's obviously convenient to not have to carry giant books around. I think a lot of factors are influencing this trend, but I don't buy that DRM is the problem. As rude as it may sound, I doubt most of the general public even knows what DRM is. Well, the data itself shows that the majority of consumer book sales are going to paper, so that argument may be moot anyway. Newer generations probably won't purchase nearly as many paper books (or digital, even) as older generations. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. The market will probably shrink and be taken over by short-form work designed for tablets and e-readers.
akandiah 13y ago
I am not surprised. The quality of a majority of the e-books (especially those found on the Kindle) are horrible! I really can't see people being prepared to pay money for poor type-setting and layout.
- bloodorange 13y ago
  I am forced to agree. Recently I was looking to buy a few books and the reviews had a recurring theme: The e-books had a lot of typesetting, grammatical issues etc. while the print books were fine. I bought printed copies for all of them. This gives the impression that the publishers don't give the e-books as much priority as the print editions. Given this fact, I don't see how they can complain if e-book sales are hitting a plateau.
adidash 13y ago
Wonder how much piracy could be influencing these numbers.
thirdtruck 13y ago
Are they factoring indie sales into these numbers? Large media producers of all stripes are notorious for conflating their sales with all sales. That makes for a particularly egregious practice here, where indies may account for 30-40% or more of sales.
brg 13y ago
I have a data point which supports the thesis, at least in the torso and tail. I have a published two books within the last 16 months. For the first one, published in early 2012, the Kindle sales were usually 2x to 3x that of the print sales. This held steady until around November of last year, and then suddenly declined. Today print sales are nearly 2x that of the Kindle sales. The important data point is that the Amazon sales ranks of both have remained steady.
markbernard 13y ago
This article only looks at sales in ebooks from publishers. It does not look at independent sales figures, which make up a majority of the ebook market.

51 points by razorburn 13y ago

I don't understand why we keep having this conversation when the answer couldn't be any more obvious...avid readers represent a minority of the population. And while avid readers represent a big chunk of book sales...many books are purchased by people who rarely buy books at all (let alone for pleasure). When purchasing an ebook reader is as trivial as buying a pocket calculator...then you'll see a massive shift in the proportion of ebook sales vs print sales. (Also, it would be enormously helpful if ebooks could be purchased WITHOUT a credit card...afterall kids buy books too.)

gojomo 13y ago
Or as Steve Jobs put it: "People don't read anymore."
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  and he didn't have a problem with that.
  - Tichy 13y ago
    He still bothered to produce a biography of himself.

clumsysmurf 13y ago

The article cites a number of reasons why this could be the case. I would also like to throw in DRM & proprietary formats. First, you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too. That would make me nervous if I was heavily invested in some ecosystem. But another interesting theory, not mentioned in the article, is that there may be a difference in reading speed and comprehension between paper and screens (although I have seen conflicting data on this). http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-paper-screens http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-pap... One fascinating idea from this article is that "As far as our brains are concerned, however, text is a tangible part of the physical world we inhabit." Personally, I comprehend information much better when its in some format like PDF which is not re-flowable. But most books these days, available from Amazon or Apple, do not meet that description. Maybe I'm an odd one, but my ideal reading device would probably be some 13" tablet that could display a whole PDF page at a time.

kabdib 13y ago
> [if] you are using something like a Kindle you are licensing content. If Amazon goes away, I wouldn't be surprised if your content does too. I break DRM on all the Kindle content I buy. If I couldn't break the DRM, I wouldn't buy it. I also try to support non-DRM books by buying them preferentially. Baen books, for instance. There are other non-DRM publishers. And no, I do /not/ share. I have a Kindle DX for reading papers (e.g., from the ACM). I haven't tried reading conference papers on a tablet (e.g., iPad) mainly because I don't have one, and while I wonder if the experience is better, I like the fact that the Kindles don't have to be recharged every day. The fact that I can go a week or more without recharging makes them a lot more book-like to me.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  Some Kindle titles have disabled DRM. its an option the author can set. obviously, few choose to do so. I imagine Cory Doctorow does.
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    You can't disable DRM in KDP if you upload a book with it enabled, so authors can't change their mind later.

GabrielF00 13y ago

One of the most interesting things to come to light in the anti-trust decision against Apple was that Amazon was happily buying bestselling eBooks from publishers for $13 and reselling them for $9. The publishers preferred the opposite: for Apple and Amazon pay them $9 and then resell the books for $13. The publishers WANTED the eBook market to slow down - they didn't want people to stop buying hardcovers from Barnes and Noble for $30 and they didn't want people thinking that a new bestselling novel was only worth $10.

ekianjo 13y ago

Well ebooks prices are ridiculous in the first place. I only buy ebooks when the price is not fixed （bundles） and without drms. Other that that, there is so muc free stuff to download from the public domain, i dont get bored. And i still buy physical books, too.

mrmondo 13y ago
I'm with you on the no-DRM, if I do buy a DRM eBook I have to be able to remove the DRM (defeating the purpose).
- rdl 13y ago
  The DRM which genuinely vexes me is Audible, so I make a point of ripping (+++) anything I buy, because it actually makes the works difficult for me to play otherwise (it blocks output from the iPhone except in analog, so it doesn't play on my vehicle dock. I end up having to rip and put them on SD cards to play directly on the car's audio system.)

nopinsight 13y ago

1. Most of the current e-book contents & formats (Kindle, epub, etc.) have not yet fully exploited the capabilities of the digital medium. I'd say we are not more than 30-40% (or less) there, even just considering the current level of technology. 2. Habits are hard to change. What you are most accustomed to when growing up, you tend to continue unless the advantages of change is overwhelming. Current e-book formats do not yet offer huge advantages over paper books, thus many adults keep buying paper ones. (Some advantages, like physical storage space & weight, are big, but confined to specific situations, say during travel, as mentioned in the article.) 3. New generations of kids are more and more distracted by digital interactivity and communications. I suspect the average amount of long-form reading per person in the developed world has declined over time. (Does anyone have an estimate?) Long-form narratives like paper books and current e-books cannot now hold attention of most casual readers, especially the young. Even though I did not grow up with a computer and read many books as a child, I now read quite a bit less books and many more short items on the Web (articles, blogs, forum posts, etc.). 4. Over time, when the new generation of digital natives grows up and technology progresses, e-books would gradually but surely dominate the reading market for all types of books. More importantly, popular non-fictions will be developed as a new kind of e-books, which cannot even be fully presented in the traditional narrative form. Al Gore's Our Choice [1] is just an example of the first generation's interactive e-books. [1] http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/ http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/

girvo 13y ago
In response to (3) -- I read a LOT as a kid, too, and I also stopped as I got older. Until I got a kindle that is: now I read every day. I'm quite happy about that. And the browser in the PaperWhite is really handy, when I'm on the go ill, often leave the tablet to home and use my kindle to read HN or The Verge. Just a random anecdote :)
AsymetricCom 13y ago
Not a big fan of the interactive e-book paradigm in general, but it certainly has its place. long form reading is not something I anticipate going away.

pcunite 13y ago

I recently bought 7 books. The price difference for a PDF file was sometimes more than a real physical copy. For whatever reason I was not willing to pay even the same amount. So, into my online shopping cart went 7 print copies ... go figure.

Tichy 13y ago
I feel the same, but lately most ebooks I looked at were a couple of EUR cheaper than their paperback counterparts. I think the publishers/vendors are learning.

ps4fanboy 13y ago

every single time I look to get an eBook they are always more expensive than a real copy plus shipping.

cgrubb 13y ago

I'm with John Carmack that really it is just better having everything in the cloud: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1sjRD7NSec#t=3m57s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1sjRD7NSec#t=3m57s So ebooks only growing at 5% with 25% market share surprises me. At that rate it will take ebooks 10 years to draw even with print: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve%5B0.25+*+1.05%5En+%3D%3D+0.75*.95%5En%2C+n%5D http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve%5B0.25+*+1.05%5En...

qq66 13y ago

I think this is mostly price driven. The initial frenzy over Ebooks was the promise of volume - 2000 books on my Kindle! Which has faded as people realize that it would cost $200,000 to fill the Kindle, and the result is far less useful/general-purpose than a printed book (no loans, sales, requires battery, lasts shorter amount of time)

bd 13y ago

Author of the original Association of American Publishers report posted a comment to Washington Post article with rebuttal of this interpretation of their data: As the person who produced the AAP report quoted here, I'm not given enough characters in Comments to point out the countless errors in this piece. It misunderstands our basic data and, since our reports only track current vs previous year, quotes figures that come out of nowhere and are unrecognizable. It misses the widely-reported fact that Q1 2013's overall eBook growth slowed because of the Children's/Young Adults category: The Q1 lead-up to the Hunger Games film in March 2012 drove C/YA eBooks to extraordinary triple-digit growth; minus a comparable blockbuster in Q1 2013, C/YA slowed. Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction eBooks, however, grew 14% in the same time '12-'13 period. Also, an essential point is missed: These are not retail sales numbers but, instead, publishers' net revenues coming from all their distribution channels including Institutions (e.g. schools, libraries) and Book Fairs. That also means, for instance, that with Borders' financial troubles no longer a factor, publishers have seen their net revenue from print stabilize which, in turn, affects their overall percentage earned from eBooks in these reports. Finally, the piece's premise that an eBook is an eBook is an eBook is wrong. Each category within consumer books - Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction, Children's/YA and Religious Presses - has moved into e-formats at different points in time. Adult F/NF was the pioneer, starting years ago, and that growth has become more consistent as it's matured. C/YA, which entered later, is now in the midst of enormous transition. Religious Presses are more newcomers to eBooks. Lumping these distinct categories together and making broad generalizations makes little sense. We release highlights of all our reports to media (including the Post). We're happy to share. But an article based on a non-journalistic blog that itself has only second-hand information does a disservice to readers, authors and publishers. Andi Sporkin Association of American Publishers http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/08/e-book-sales-are-leveling-off-heres-why/?commentID=washingtonpost.com/ECHO/item/1376001588-174-705 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/08/e...

dmix 13y ago
This is proper journalism ^, getting analysis from people who didn't just read the abstract.
- 13y ago

mrmondo 13y ago

This is really interesting, because me, my partner, colleges at work and friends are all buying more ebooks than we've ever done before. All our work books are now digital and the older generations in my family all now own kindles (and use them).

shmerl 13y ago

> The shift from e-readers to tablets is putting a damper on e-book sales. I didn't understand this part. Why would tablets usage reduce e-books sales if you can read e-books on your tablet all the same? If the author means the DRM issue, then it's not really the case, since there are many DRM free e-books sold already, and even with DRMed ones, DRM can be removed in most cases in order to access them on any device you want.

cryowaffle 13y ago
His point is that people will own an ebook reader or a tablet. If they own an ebook reader and they turn it on, 100% of their time will be reading a book. If they own a tablet and turn it on they have lots of options, maybe only 10% of the time they will read an ebook. The argument hinges on the idea that people pick up tablets only so many hours of the day and then decide what to do. I think it's flimsy because using a tablet is a different act than wanting to read a book.
- shmerl 13y ago
  Yeah, I'd say if you want to read an e-book and you have a tablet - you would use your tablet for that. So I don't see how this can reduce your interest in buying e-books.
  - michaelt 13y ago
    Because instead of buying two e-books while traveling, you buy one then go on Facebook/HN/Angry Birds.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      Your need to buy some particular e-book shouldn't depend on whether you need to access HN or not. So I don't see any relation there.
      - michaelt 13y ago

tommaxwell 13y ago

I actually find myself buying more and more ebooks lately. I find it really convenient for various reasons, including Whispersync (which is quite useful). Also I travel a lot and am in the process of finishing multiple books, so it's obviously convenient to not have to carry giant books around. I think a lot of factors are influencing this trend, but I don't buy that DRM is the problem. As rude as it may sound, I doubt most of the general public even knows what DRM is. Well, the data itself shows that the majority of consumer book sales are going to paper, so that argument may be moot anyway. Newer generations probably won't purchase nearly as many paper books (or digital, even) as older generations. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. The market will probably shrink and be taken over by short-form work designed for tablets and e-readers.

akandiah 13y ago

I am not surprised. The quality of a majority of the e-books (especially those found on the Kindle) are horrible! I really can't see people being prepared to pay money for poor type-setting and layout.

bloodorange 13y ago
I am forced to agree. Recently I was looking to buy a few books and the reviews had a recurring theme: The e-books had a lot of typesetting, grammatical issues etc. while the print books were fine. I bought printed copies for all of them. This gives the impression that the publishers don't give the e-books as much priority as the print editions. Given this fact, I don't see how they can complain if e-book sales are hitting a plateau.

adidash 13y ago

Wonder how much piracy could be influencing these numbers.

thirdtruck 13y ago

Are they factoring indie sales into these numbers? Large media producers of all stripes are notorious for conflating their sales with all sales. That makes for a particularly egregious practice here, where indies may account for 30-40% or more of sales.

brg 13y ago

I have a data point which supports the thesis, at least in the torso and tail. I have a published two books within the last 16 months. For the first one, published in early 2012, the Kindle sales were usually 2x to 3x that of the print sales. This held steady until around November of last year, and then suddenly declined. Today print sales are nearly 2x that of the Kindle sales. The important data point is that the Amazon sales ranks of both have remained steady.

markbernard 13y ago

This article only looks at sales in ebooks from publishers. It does not look at independent sales figures, which make up a majority of the ebook market.