Jon Page on the digital future for booksellers

15 May 2013 Books+Publishing

Pages & Pages general manager Jon Page is stepping down as president of the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) in June. In his final ‘President’s report’ in the ABA’s News on Bookselling, Page says he remains ‘a firm believer that the digital revolution taking place with books is not a threat to bookshops but a huge opportunity’. The following is an edited extract from his article.

When I began my role three years ago REDgroup had just launched their partnership with Kobo. Dymocks had their affiliation with ebooks.com. Apple had just launched iBooks and Amazon and the Kindle were already synonymous with ebooks and ereaders. There didn’t seem to be a pathway for bookshops. There was a touted eBook solution from TitlePage, that is still yet to see the light of day, but other avenues were cost prohibitive. Then came Booki.sh and ReadCloud with Copia possibly around the corner. A Google option was explored but the best interests of booksellers was not being looked after and eventually Google stepped away from retail partnerships. Sadly the same thing appears to have happened with Booki.sh after being gobbled up by OverDrive.

I am a firm believer that the digital revolution taking place with books is not a threat to bookshops but a huge opportunity, an opportunity that bookshops need to grasp with both hands. But while there are a number of different options for bookshop to pursue if they want to sell ebooks none of them are ideal. Digital Rights Management (DRM) requirements from publishers mean either a huge investment or partnering with a third party vendor. Reduced prices and razor thin margins mean any investment isn’t likely to be returned quickly and the revenue split with a vendor means considerably less profit per book sale. And Amazon is leading the market, not just with predatory pricing strategies but also with an ereading device that has become the default terminology with ebooks.

Despite all this my opinion that there is a place for bricks-and-mortar bookshops selling ebooks remains firm. The ebook is just another book format, a format that is expected to account for 25% of all book sales. If a bookshop wants to remain relevant to readers, remain the first destination their customers go to for a book, then a bookshop must offer print and digital books. Part of this offering must be a credible ereading device.

When Pages & Pages first started selling ebooks our device didn’t have enough credibility and it soon lost all of it. We have started to claw market back with the BeBook we are now selling but the Kindle and Kobo ereaders have a much deeper interface with their ebook store which consequently makes them far more user friendly. The iPad is great because it is open to a number of apps but there is less customer loyalty because it is open to a number of apps. For bookshops to be successful selling ebooks they need a successful ereader. This also means booksellers can get on with the job of selling physical product instead of competing in the search engine arena.

Category: Features