[taglines]

Publishers Lunch notes on its public newsletter this week:

Both formally and informally, booksellers at the American Booksellers Association's Winter Institute were talking about, and listening to, ideas for how bookstores can preserve their essential role during the digital transition and drive revenue from more than sales of printed books.

On Wednesday Dan Clancy from Google tried to open the door to brainstorming how Google can help retailers sell ebooks from physical stores. The starting principle is that "when you buy a digital book from a physical store, it needs to be simple."

A sample notion was to ask, what if it's as simple as taking a digital picture of the book's bar code with a phone (and credit the store for the sale). Though cards redeemable for ebooks (like Symtio's product) have not taken off and present limited inventory, he suggested there could be a kiosk to produce such cards. Most importantly, he underscored that if bookstores are capturing customer e-mail addresses it makes it a lot easier to sell ebooks or fulfill e and print bundles, since they can email the customer a unique link in order to download their ebook. And that emphasizes bookstores' core goal, which is "how do you maintain your relationship with the customer even on the device" instead of turning them over to the device manufacturer.

Clancy also believes "bundling is a key component in this blended world." (At the panel of publishing executives, however, Madeline McIntosh from Random House said they were still "wrestling with what is the value of that digital file" and are still stuck on the idea that giving away an ebook along with a print book, or selling it as a cheap upgrade makes it hard to "turn around and say that the ebook in and of itself has value, and we don't want our ebooks to be low priced.)

Clancy also predicated that "personally, I think the tablet--not just the Apple tablet--is the way of the future in ereading." To that end, ignoring the issues of small retailers selling expensive electronics, he speculated that stores could sell tablets and be established as the default place the customer buys ebooks from those units.

But Clancy did acknowledge that earlier visions of how the revenue splits might work for Google Editions has changed and while Google can help stores, it can't save them. "The margins on digital books are going to be less than the margins on physical books. Even if Google takes a small amount, the margin is still shrinking."

......

Food for thought, if nothing else.