E-book sales down

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Thanks for the link. Interesting.

As a long time audibook listener (I actually started with cd's way back when), I would say that it's going to be very hard for someone to make an inroad into audible. Audible allows you to listen via both iTunes and their own audible app. If it's like ebooks and everyone requires their own app, then I think it will be pretty hard to get customers. I do think that a subscription service might be more successful in audiobooks than it is in ebooks.

Of course, I could very well be wrong there. It could be that the audiobook market has a dynamic like the movie streaming market where Amazon, Apple, Netflix and the assorted cable companies all have managed to grab a piece of the market and establish a niche. Apple, Amazon and the cable companies have individual rentals while netflix has monthly subscriptions. It could be that people will be fine using multiple apps.

As a follow up, earlier this week my 14 year old nephew texted me, asking me to get him the audio version of Rocket Boys, aka October Skies. He had been assigned it in school and preferred to listen to it rather than read it. I gave him both the ebook and audiobook, but I rather doubt he is going to look at the ebook.

[Tarana]

Ebook sales down? For one thing, those who wanted ecopies of their paper books have probably already purchased them, so of course sales would flatline eventually.

The main reason why the sales are down, IMHO, is that they raised prices. There is nothing I want that desperately, so it's on my wishlist for a future sale. I wonder if they've figured out that their price raising will simply drive more to pirate books?

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Ebook sales down? For one thing, those who wanted ecopies of their paper books have probably already purchased them, so of course sales would flatline eventually.

The main reason why the sales are down, IMHO, is that they raised prices. There is nothing I want that desperately, so it's on my wishlist for a future sale. I wonder if they've figured out that their price raising will simply drive more to pirate books?

Then they will use the pirating excuse to keep prices high and try to direct everyone back to buying paper copies instead. It's all about protecting the status quo dinosaur.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Ebook sales down? For one thing, those who wanted ecopies of their paper books have probably already purchased them, so of course sales would flatline eventually.

The main reason why the sales are down, IMHO, is that they raised prices. There is nothing I want that desperately, so it's on my wishlist for a future sale. I wonder if they've figured out that their price raising will simply drive more to pirate books?

Add to that the novelty and convenience of being able to buy ebooks so easily from your easy chair, that most everyone now has a backlog of to-be-read books large enough to last a lifetime... or ten. That's definitely the case in my situation. I'll still grab freebies, even there not as many as I used to either, and still purchase a few new books I'm really interested in, but nowhere near like I used to.

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Then they will use the pirating excuse to keep prices high and try to direct everyone back to buying paper copies instead. It's all about protecting the status quo dinosaur.

I'm afraid you're right about that. If they'd look at other reasons already mentioned in this thread though they'd realize that piracy has nothing to do with it, but it's the easiest to lay blame to justify increasing the prices. And if they increase prices, I'll be even less likely to purchase new ebooks, it'll drop to only a handful of authors I'm already familiar with and know I like.

I really think it's more a case of most everyone overbuying at first, and now ebook sales are just settling down into a normal pattern.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Tarana

The main reason why the sales are down, IMHO, is that they raised prices.

The main reason *their* ebook sales are down.

There are indications that smaller tradpubs are doing fine. Likewise AmazonPublishing, which is tradpub, and Indies, who are still expanding their aggregate share.

Mind you, given the price disparity between BPH titles and everybody else's, it is not impossible that a big enough drop in their unit sales might overwhelm a double digit *increase* in everybody else's since the publishing media only reports gross dollar sales and not unit sales. A big enough drop in average selling price can make even a booming market look stagnant of in decline when viewed through inappropriate metrics.

(As in, for every $12 ebook consumers refuse to buy, they could buy three Indie titles and the pundits could still see a "drop" even though more books were sold to more readers.)

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Add to that the novelty and convenience of being able to buy ebooks so easily from your easy chair, that most everyone now has a backlog of to-be-read books large enough to last a lifetime... or ten. That's definitely the case in my situation. I'll still grab freebies, even there not as many as I used to either, and still purchase a few new books I'm really interested in, but nowhere near like I used to.


I'm afraid you're right about that. If they'd look at other reasons already mentioned in this thread though they'd realize that piracy has nothing to do with it, but it's the easiest to lay blame to justify increasing the prices. And if they increase prices, I'll be even less likely to purchase new ebooks, it'll drop to only a handful of authors I'm already familiar with and know I like.

I really think it's more a case of most everyone overbuying at first, and now ebook sales are just settling down into a normal pattern.

This is me. When ebook prices were more reasonable I bought a lot. I don't buy much anymore because I already have a huge tbr list and I don't really have any must read authors anymore. I quit buying big authors when prices went up and found plenty of others to read. If prices came down again now, I'm already out of the habit of buying. I might by the latest Game of Thrones books, but I doubt they will be out soon.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Add to that the novelty and convenience of being able to buy ebooks so easily from your easy chair, that most everyone now has a backlog of to-be-read books large enough to last a lifetime... or ten. That's definitely the case in my situation. I'll still grab freebies, even there not as many as I used to either, and still purchase a few new books I'm really interested in, but nowhere near like I used to.

This is true for me as well. I've started buying ebooks when I got my Kindle Touch in 2011. Up until 2014 I bought everything I could think of that I would ever want, and everything that came along that I thought could also be interesting. (This is mainly the "If you like this, you'll probably like that"-stuff you see when buying new books.) I've also scoured the Reading Recommendation forum here, and bought a lot of stuff I encountered there. One of the examples is the (huge) Malazan Book of the Fallen omnibus.

Now I own almost 800 books, of which over 50 are Delphi Classics (each of which contains all books from an author), and I have a few thousand public domain books by Feedbooks.com on top of that. Those are not even Calibre. If I want to read a PD book, I'll compare the Feedbooks and Delphi versions, and either put the Feedbooks one in Calibre, or extract the Delphi one from the author's omnibus.

I can never read all of this in the next 50 years; I've just built myself a lifetime library, which would have cost me thousands of euro's and entire rooms in the house if I had had to do it in paper. As ebooks, it was cheap to do, using Kobo Coupons, Delphi @ €2-4 per author, and Feedbooks for free.

I have bought very few ebooks in the last 1,5 year. I'm not even actively looking for new books because I already have everything I can think of, and more. The only case I now buy a new book is when something catches my attention and I want to read it as soon as possible. Then I buy it, and read it after I finish my current book (or series).