What We Learned about eBooks by Talking to Readers [19.08.2011]
What Miriam Zolin learned about eBooks by talking to readers
In this recent series of Q&As (listed at the end of this post) with real readers, I was trying to tap into how readers are approaching the phenomenon of eBooks. For those of us who publish, it’s a conversation we’ve been having for a while – and as is often the case in industry groups with specialised knowledge, we knew about eBooks before they existed in the minds of readers, and we’ve been talking about them in abstract terms ever since. We worry about how to price them, where to sell them and who should do our conversions and uploads. Good business concerns, but not really tapping into the experience of reading an eBook. And therefore not really about how we market them or where they should sit on our production schedules.
To put my motivation in context, apart from being a publisher, I’m a writer who’s been approached by the publisher of my first novel to give them the rights to release it as an eBook edition. I’ve hesitated, because there are some rights and pricing questions I’m not comfortable with. I really want my eBook out there – but I want it available in every country in the world, and at the lowest possible price. That’s because I want new readers to discover my writing, and hopefully through my first novel become interested in reading the next cab off the rank. I want sales volume – lots of it – and as it’s old news now, I think a high eBook price will get in the way of that. Other writers will feel differently. And I know some publishers do as well. But there are readers and writers (and maybe publishers) out there who fall squarely on my side of the fence on this one.
And I’m a reader who has an account with Kobo and has started reading and buying books to read on my smartphone. Kobo will have noticed me giving them more money recently as I started buy some books to read electronically, as preferred option to a print edition, not a poor facsimile.
I approached the Q&As trying to keep these three roles in balance. Or maybe it’s four roles. I’m also a web content producer in my day job and blessed to be in a team led by someone who constantly advocates for the site’s real users. We research to find out who our site’s visitors are, why they come to our site, what they find challenging when they get there, what they find that they like… pretty standard stuff if you read the text books but rare enough in real life.
Q&A Methodology
I talked to about a dozen readers of eBooks in the last couple of months. Not an enormous sample, and hardly random because they were mostly in my workplace, my circle of friends and acquaintances or fellow public transport travellers. All of them are already reading eBooks or intending to very soon. I spoke to strangers and people I knew, men and women, younger and older, with families and single, inner city dwellers and suburbanites. I told people I spoke to that I was researching for a series of blogs and wanted to find out about their experience of eBooks. I avoided publishers, writers and booksellers.
Key messages
Some key messages came out of all the interviews – you might find some of them surprising!
Readers will be reading more: When people start using an eReader, they read at least as much as they did before, but generally more books, more often.
Readers want to pay a reasonable price: Readers think print books in Australia are too expensive. They are generally happy to pay a ‘reasonable amount’ for an eBook. The reasonable amount varies from person to person, but if you price your eBooks by offering a $30% discount on the print edition, you’re probably just making the eBook a little bit closer to what people really think they should be paying for a paperback, i.e. too expensive for an eBook! With everybody reading more as they shift to eBooks, maybe we need to price our eBooks to attract readers and maybe our bottom lines will thank us.
Readers don’t know about Kobo or Booki.sh: When you mention eBooks everybody thinks of Amazon and Kindle first. iPads come next, but there are far fewer of them (at least among the sample I spoke to). This is a frustration for these Australian readers, as they are blocked from downloading so many books on Amazon. And they want more Australian content. Kobo and Readings, are you listening?
Readers are choosing eBooks first: Some readers don’t consider the eBook an alternative option any more – it’s already their first choice. That means that if publishers can get their eBook editions uploaded to coincide with the release of the print book they’ll maximise readership. If people can’t find a legal version, they will download an illegal one. A small number of people will always want the free stuff – it’s one of life’s constants – but why give anyone an excuse?
The print book will still have a place: Many people love the feel of a book in their hands – the sensory experience. These people like the idea of having a bookshelf of treasured print books and an eReader full of books they’ll never own in print.
Coincidentally, at the time I was doing this research, I found myself having my own frustrating eBook experience …
A real life example – how it feels to want the eBook
Recently, listening to the Book Show on Radio National while I sat at my desk at work, I heard an interview with the editors of Australian colonial adventure fiction and I was interested – the book aligns with some research I’m doing for a writing project. I jotted the name down, and noted that the book is published by Melbourne University Press. They’re a pretty switched on crew, who are actively producing eBook editions, so in my lunch break I searched for them on Kobo – my preferred source of eBooks. The book wasn’t there, even though a previous book in the series – Australian colonial crime fiction was. The price of the (somewhat older) crime fiction volume was good ($16.99 discounted to $12.31) and I downloaded it and have been reading it on the tram. It’s great! Later I went to the Readings site, thinking maybe the adventure book was available in their eBooks collection, and sure enough, there it was. I was surprised to see, however that the eBook edition was priced at a whopping $27.99. The paperback is $39.99 so it’s definitely a discount, but if I were desperate to read this book (I kind of am a bit) then I would go to my library, or buy it in paperback. An eBook at $27.99 feels like too much. I think most – if not all – of the readers I spoke to in the last few weeks would agree.
Miriam Zolin is the publisher at extempore and the convener and coordinator at the National Jazz Writing Competition, now accepting entries! She reads and writes fiction, blogs, reviews and essays.
Read the four Q&As in this series
Instalment 4, Instalment 3, Instalment 2, Instalment 1
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Comments
AV — 19 August at 10:58AM
I feel like the Book.ish model should be cheaper again than a downloaded ePub or Kindle book. I think it comes down to a feeling of ownership – sure, I’d pay a few bucks for the convenience of accessing my books on anything with a browser, but if the same amount of money (especially if it’s more than $20), I’d rather purchase a file that I can download and store on my computer and make as many copies as I like. Call me old-fashioned, but at least then I feel like I actually own something, rather than simply being allowed to access it.