Amazon have just opened up the Kindle store for independent publishing in Spain and Italy, adding to the US, UK, German and French sites that are already in place. This means that independent authors and publishers can now reach more non-English speaking markets and those stores will soon be bristling with ebooks. The new Kindle Fire and Touch devices have been released in the US and Amazon have demonstrated that ebooks now outsell print in the US.
It's an exciting time in digital but as a Brit recently returned to these fair shores as well as an independent author, I have been pondering why the uptake of ebooks and e-readers is so behind America and even Australia. Here are my thoughts.
America had the first generation Kindle in 2007 and Amazon only released it to the wider world in 2009. I was one of the first to buy one in Australia and immediately fell in love with the ease of buying and consuming books. But the uptake has been slower here as there are fewer devices across the various platforms. Even now the Kindle Fire isn't available in the UK this Christmas (although the basic Kindle is just £89). This slower tech release means inevitably we are about 18 months behind.
For a start, there's VAT on ebooks and not on print books. Seriously, this is one of those crazy laws that really should be changed. If you agree, please join the petition here. Then there's the fact that print books are bundled in bookstores with 3 for 2 deals and reductions so the print copies end up being cheaper than digital. If print is cheaper, you need other reasons to buy. Pricing was my primary reason for buying a Kindle when I lived in Australia as new print books were around $35 (£12), over three times the price of books in the UK, so I had stopped buying new fiction. With the adoption of the Kindle and the Amazon store, I was back on my voracious reading schedule which was good for me, the publishers and the authors. This just doesn't apply to the UK market.
I am always impressed by how easy it is to find a print book here. You can get books everywhere and our secondhand shops really are fantastic. In America and Australia, people may have to drive a long, long way to find a bookstore or they have to order online anyway. If you can get your ebook instantly with the Kindle why would you wait? This is demonstrated in the difference in Amazon's marketing between the US and UK. Here, it's all about space and weight as well as speed and choice whereas space just doesn't matter in those markets, it's all about availability and price there.
Why move to digital when there's nothing wrong with print? Here are my reasons reading on the Kindle is better than print but plenty of people disagree. Compared to the US and Australia, it feels like our national character is less entrepreneurial, clinging to the past instead of embracing the future and resistance to digital is part of that. It might also be resonant of the snobbery that still exists in publishing which is breaking down in the US as big name authors go independent and Big Six publishers move faster into digital. That change is starting to happen here but most think we're still at least 18 months behind America.
What do you think? Is the UK and European ebook market behind the US, and why?
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Overheard a conversation between two old men on the train. They were both clearly "book men" and knew the business well. As we went through towns they spoke about bookshops they had known and loved there - most of which had now closed. One of them was in his eighties and said he loved his e-reader. He could make the print larger so it was easier for him to read. It was light and easy to carry around. Best of all he didn't have to go to a bookshop the books came to him "out of the air" as he put it.
I am writing about this issue as well - more to follow soon!
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/matthew-crockatt/whats-revolutionary-about_b_1136329.html
This is certainly wrong, the british are the most ardent embracers of new technology, usually behind the Japanese but ahead of the USA, mobile phones and broadband being the classical examples, both things being standard in the UK at a time when they were still a rarity in the USA.
Call us Brits antiquated but I think it's going to be a while before E Readers (if they ever do) over take the book itself.
And if I remember correctly, when CD's came out, they said Vinyl would be dead, but Vinyl is still alive.
And I agree with the pricing issue - I would love to get one for my niece especially for when she goes away on holiday - it's convinient but the price is a lot (and yes I have an ipda but I had to save for that too)
You're right, the creative side won't go away - it's more that we will more into e-books for 'throwaway' airport novels and mass market and we'll buy creative hardbacks for beautiful covers less often for more money. I'm certainly not saying the physical book is going away, more that the purpose will change.
On CDs & vinyl, it's true there's a vinyl revival in some places but it's not mainstream anymore i.e. with loads of high street shops selling it - it's more collector's editions as beautiful books will most likely become.
So we are looking at the remaining two thirds as the e reader market.
There will be a large portion of these people who are sadly either, "casual" readers; the ones who read a book on holiday, buy them for birthdays and christmas and will "follow" a favourite author.
There are another and sadly growing area of people (like me) who because of financial pressures have turned to buy second hand books from charity shops, markets and local book fairs as i really cant JUSTIFY spending £12.99 on a new hardback.
So the UK marketplace is; at the moment;small. But like many book lovers, the appeal of the e readers is clear and i am sure, many of us will be seriously considering making that purchase someday........
They REALLY need to sort out the costs. The main reason there is so much pirating of music is because business kept on charging so much for a digital copy and people in general were just plain offended by the clear greed in it. They are doing the same thing with ebooks and many people find it unacceptable to pay more for an ebook than for a paper book.
If they don't change this and truly promote ebooks as a better idea than paper, it will take far longer to save the trees... ;-)
I also want to add that if the UK market is slow to catch up by 18 months, Italy is still farther behind by 20-24- This is because publishers actively avoid publishing digital files in our market. We just now got the Kindle basic model, and we won't get the fire until sometime in 2013, probably. Our library of available books is also tiny because the local publishers are even more opposed to change than US or UK publishers. In a race of heel draggers, our guys are trying to slow down and lose big time. So, so frustrating waiting for them to wake up and embrace the digital market.
I was at a publisher's conference yesterday and the pricing issue was discussed. Firstly, there's VAT on ebooks and not on print - crazy! then they demonstrated that the costs associated with ebooks are pretty much the same as print (i.e. the printing is only 2-7% of price) so they can't price them much lower - BUT/ consumers like us expect lower prices because there's no physical product. I thought they left out costs such as warehousing & freight as printing is just one aspect, but basically they know the issues & they know they have to find an answer as this is the way the world is going (although the transition will take a few years)