“Better Books” is a many-part conversation between publicist Dan Wagstaff and Monique Trottier, which looks at the book publishing industry’s challenges, successes and promises from a technology perspective.
If you’re new to this conversation, or want to catch-up, here’s what we’ve been discussing.
Introduction, where we outline why the series is called Better Books. “Despite the industry’s many challenges, the greatest is to produce better books. Better in terms of quality, but also in terms of distribution, format, discoverability. Better … define it how you wish.”
Part 1. What market challenges does the Canadian book publishing industry face.
Part 2. Dan and I debate the merits and demerits of comparing the music industry and the book industry.
Part 3. We go on a bit, discussing what we’ve learned.
Welcome to Part 4
Last week we were talking about ebooks and POD (print on demand). The question this week is
Could (or should) ebooks be something publishers offer directly?
Quote: Dan says:
Honestly, I don’t see the point in offering books to download until there’s a really good way to read them, and, more importantly, there’s evidence that consumers actually want to be able to do this!
I think our discussion in the last two weeks has shown that there is a desire to read ebooks, but not a desire on the part of publishers to make new releases available in that format.
Quote: Dan goes on to say:
Anyway, if there’s the demand, I would expect that downloads will be provided by online bookstores not by the publishers directly. I mean publishers could supply books to their customers directly now if they wanted to, but they don’t have the desire or infrastructure, etc. I don’t see this changing any time soon.
Dan and I then disparaged the publishing industry’s lack of innovation and revolutionary thinking. We might have been a bit harsh so I’ll let you speculate about what we said.
Here are my half-baked thoughts.
Quote: Monique says:
Publishers should be investing in technology that improves discoverability of their titles–on their own sites and others.
I’m particularly interested in the publishers who are investing in technology that allows them to make their titles available in search inside the book formats from their own websites.
If publishers want to create online community and drive sales to stores, I think it’s good money spent by investing in technology and getting your flipping titles up on your website. Go digital. Offer PDFs, which can be read by any computer, most hand-held devices including Palm, Blackberry, Sony Playstation Portal (PSP), etc. At least start some form of ebook publishing and experimenting with the production, costs, distribution, formats, market desires.
Google and Amazon offer Search Inside the Book. Those are two great options. Publishers should participate in both, but they also have to offer something on their own sites and on their own terms. You want to own your digital identity and part of that is archiving, storing and distributing your own books online, as well as planning, measuring success and improving. Market knowledge isn’t going to come to those who are afraid of being early adopters.
Next week we’ll talk more about publishers offering titles directly and what impact that has on booksellers.