MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - John Grisham speaks out on the future of pbooks and ebooks

Harmon · 11-05-2009, 05:58 PM

I think pbook publishers and ebook publishers are involved in two different but overlapping markets. I mean this not merely in terms of the consumer, but in terms of the production process.

I think publishers see ebooks as an add-on to the pbook market. So they are letting pbook concerns dominate their marketing strategies. And it needs to be born in mind that the current pbook marketing strategies are based on (1) getting the resellers to provide the cash flow which permits the publishers to continue in business and (2) making the resellers responsible for some, if not all, of the production & distribution costs.

I think that there is already a model out there which would meet publishers' needs and which has demonstrated that it will work for book readers - and it's not Netflix or iTunes. It's Audible, which for the two or three people who don't know it, purports to sell audiobooks for download. What Audible really does is run a subscription service for abooks, where you can keep your abook forever, run it on whatever mp3/aac player you want, and download replacement copies.

Now, think about an ebook service of the same kind, called Readable. You sign up for $17.95 a month, get a "credit" or two against "purchases" of ebooks, have access to additional ebooks at a discounted price, with the option of higher priced plans that get you more credits. The discounted price is sometimes less than the cost of the credit, so you "buy" that ebook for the lower price, saving your credit to use for higer cost ebooks. You can read the ebook on whatever device you have registered at any particular time. So when you go from a Kindle to a SonyReader, you can still read your book.

I'd sign on to something like this. Would you?

11-05-2009, 05:58 PM	#116
Harmon King of the Bongo Drums Posts: 1,632 Karma: 5927225 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Excelsior! (Strange...)	I think pbook publishers and ebook publishers are involved in two different but overlapping markets. I mean this not merely in terms of the consumer, but in terms of the production process. I think publishers see ebooks as an add-on to the pbook market. So they are letting pbook concerns dominate their marketing strategies. And it needs to be born in mind that the current pbook marketing strategies are based on (1) getting the resellers to provide the cash flow which permits the publishers to continue in business and (2) making the resellers responsible for some, if not all, of the production & distribution costs. I think that there is already a model out there which would meet publishers' needs and which has demonstrated that it will work for book readers - and it's not Netflix or iTunes. It's Audible, which for the two or three people who don't know it, purports to sell audiobooks for download. What Audible really does is run a subscription service for abooks, where you can keep your abook forever, run it on whatever mp3/aac player you want, and download replacement copies. Now, think about an ebook service of the same kind, called Readable. You sign up for $17.95 a month, get a "credit" or two against "purchases" of ebooks, have access to additional ebooks at a discounted price, with the option of higher priced plans that get you more credits. The discounted price is sometimes less than the cost of the credit, so you "buy" that ebook for the lower price, saving your credit to use for higer cost ebooks. You can read the ebook on whatever device you have registered at any particular time. So when you go from a Kindle to a SonyReader, you can still read your book. I'd sign on to something like this. Would you?