MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

dhbailey · 03-25-2008, 07:07 AM

It's a complex picture and worrying won't help. Sony is selling Readers. They're trying to sell more. As with any piece of computer hardware, content is important as well. Sony has never been good at selling content to match their hardware, but that's a corporate shortcoming and hopefully it will be remedied. They learned their lesson with Betamax (which they couldn't get people to provide content for to rival VHS) so before DVDs came out, they bought Columbia pictures so they would have a huge library to market on whatever format they chose to support. That lesson seems to have been lost in the recent HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle, and it seems to have been lost in the Reader market, which they realize no matter how large it grows will stay a small niche market.

So Sony is at the mercy of the people who provide the content. I have been in touch with a lot of my favorite authors, some of whom had a book or two show up at the Sony Connect store, and others with no books there yet. From the replies I received, it is apparent that there is great disarray on the author/publisher side of things. Some of the authors wanted ebook versions but their publishers (who hold iron-clad contracts) don't want to do that, while others who had a book or two show up at Connect were totally unaware of that and were going to contact their publishers to find out what was up. Still others hate technology and are big enough names that they can dictate to their publishers and have no intention of ever releasing ebook versions.

So it will be important to contact your favorite authors (or their estates, if possible) as well as the publishers and give a two-pronged attack to convince them there really is a market for content for the Sony Reader.

There is a potential down-side to buying books in different formats (such as Microsoft's LIT format) and then converting to Reader format. The publishers will say to themselves "Gee, we're selling TONS of LIT format books but very few Sony Reader format books. I guess there just isn't any market for Sony Reader format books so we won't waste our time with it." So they don't provide books to Sony Connect bookstore to sell. Then Sony says, "Gee, there's not much content, so there may not actually be much of a continuing market here, despite the numbers of Readers we've sold, so it might be time to pull the plug on the whole thing."

Meanwhile, since LIT format books are designed only for the Microsoft Reader software on computers, the researchers will be able to look at the numbers and say (totally erroneously) "People seem to prefer reading ebooks on their computer screens by a margin of 3-to-1 [or whatever the ratio of sales really is] so it seems as if there really is no market for handheld ebook readers at all."

So while I'm not saying we all need to rush to Sony Connect to buy books, I do feel that we should all be buying some books from them just to show that we didn't just buy the Reader and then are leaving it on the shelf and have abandoned it.

03-25-2008, 07:07 AM	#3
dhbailey Guru Posts: 604 Karma: 733 Join Date: Mar 2007 Device: HP iPAQ211 / PRS 500, 700 and 505	It's a complex picture and worrying won't help. Sony is selling Readers. They're trying to sell more. As with any piece of computer hardware, content is important as well. Sony has never been good at selling content to match their hardware, but that's a corporate shortcoming and hopefully it will be remedied. They learned their lesson with Betamax (which they couldn't get people to provide content for to rival VHS) so before DVDs came out, they bought Columbia pictures so they would have a huge library to market on whatever format they chose to support. That lesson seems to have been lost in the recent HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle, and it seems to have been lost in the Reader market, which they realize no matter how large it grows will stay a small niche market. So Sony is at the mercy of the people who provide the content. I have been in touch with a lot of my favorite authors, some of whom had a book or two show up at the Sony Connect store, and others with no books there yet. From the replies I received, it is apparent that there is great disarray on the author/publisher side of things. Some of the authors wanted ebook versions but their publishers (who hold iron-clad contracts) don't want to do that, while others who had a book or two show up at Connect were totally unaware of that and were going to contact their publishers to find out what was up. Still others hate technology and are big enough names that they can dictate to their publishers and have no intention of ever releasing ebook versions. So it will be important to contact your favorite authors (or their estates, if possible) as well as the publishers and give a two-pronged attack to convince them there really is a market for content for the Sony Reader. There is a potential down-side to buying books in different formats (such as Microsoft's LIT format) and then converting to Reader format. The publishers will say to themselves "Gee, we're selling TONS of LIT format books but very few Sony Reader format books. I guess there just isn't any market for Sony Reader format books so we won't waste our time with it." So they don't provide books to Sony Connect bookstore to sell. Then Sony says, "Gee, there's not much content, so there may not actually be much of a continuing market here, despite the numbers of Readers we've sold, so it might be time to pull the plug on the whole thing." Meanwhile, since LIT format books are designed only for the Microsoft Reader software on computers, the researchers will be able to look at the numbers and say (totally erroneously) "People seem to prefer reading ebooks on their computer screens by a margin of 3-to-1 [or whatever the ratio of sales really is] so it seems as if there really is no market for handheld ebook readers at all." So while I'm not saying we all need to rush to Sony Connect to buy books, I do feel that we should all be buying some books from them just to show that we didn't just buy the Reader and then are leaving it on the shelf and have abandoned it.