Some new numbers on eBook availability across readers

[ishish]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to mention a new site we are launching today called eReaderChoice.com. Its basically a way to stack up some of the popular eReaders against each other. The one feature that I think you all might find most useful is the ability to check book availability across readers in an easy to use grid.

We also ran some numbers on about 500 books in prize-winning lists such as the pulitzer, hugo, nebula, etc. You can check it out at ereaderchoice.com, and look at the best seller lists.

Here is a summary of results:

Of 504 books:

191 were available on Kindle
167 were available on the Nook (through the B&N store)
175 were available on the Sony (through the Sony eBook store).

Average prices:
for Kindle were $9.01
for Nook $8.47
for Sony $11.05

The other interesting thing was the standard deviation around pricing. There was a lot more variation for Sony books (standard deviation was 4.6) whereas the Amazon books had a variation of 1.64 and Nook 2.77.

Anyway please get more details at www.ereaderchoice.com and run your own searches! After a while I'll compile another list of numbers and report back with what I find based on an aggregate of everyone's searches.

Thanks!
Ish
(co-creator eReaderChoice.com)

[kjk]

Looks nice!

Kinda ironic that Soul of a New Machine (great book, btw) isn't available in digital form.

[wallcraft]

How is the search performed? Since the eBook Search does not return actual links to ebooks it is difficult to check manually, however RingWorld under Hugos (for example) seems to be reporting bogus results. What I think is happening is that B&N and Sony are returning RingWorld's Children as a hit and Amazon is correctly reporting this separately.

Another strange case is Double Star, which is published by FictionWise but is only listed as available on the Kindle. This is a case of FictionWise not providing their multi-format titles explicitly on B&N or Sony sites (which is very strange in the case of B&N, which owns FictionWise).

[dsvick]

It looks nice and could be useful - have fun maintaining it

One question though instead of saying that a book is not available on a certain reader are you basing it on whether or not the book is available through the store associated with the reader? That is not exactly the same thing and can be very misleading. For example any book available in ePub can be read *on* the Sony, the nook, and I think the iRex.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ishish

Hey everyone, I just wanted to mention a new site we are launching today called eReaderChoice.com. Its basically a way to stack up some of the popular eReaders against each other. The one feature that I think you all might find most useful is the ability to check book availability across readers in an easy to use grid.

We also ran some numbers on about 500 books in prize-winning lists such as the pulitzer, hugo, nebula, etc. You can check it out at ereaderchoice.com, and look at the best seller lists.

Here is a summary of results:

Of 504 books:

191 were available on Kindle
167 were available on the Nook (through the B&N store)
175 were available on the Sony (through the Sony eBook store).

Average prices:
for Kindle were $9.01
for Nook $8.47
for Sony $11.05

The other interesting thing was the standard deviation around pricing. There was a lot more variation for Sony books (standard deviation was 4.6) whereas the Amazon books had a variation of 1.64 and Nook 2.77.

Anyway please get more details at www.ereaderchoice.com and run your own searches! After a while I'll compile another list of numbers and report back with what I find based on an aggregate of everyone's searches.

Thanks!
Ish
(co-creator eReaderChoice.com)

Hi Ish,

This is useful, but...

... there is one vitally important question. In what way - if any - are you taking regional restrictions into account? Eg, if you have a Kindle and you live outside the USA, the range of eBooks available to you is dramatically less than it is if you live in the USA. Also, the Sony Store is really only relevent to people in the USA; if you live in the UK and you own a Sony, you're far more likely to buy your books from Waterstones or W.H. Smiths.

I don't mean to be critical, but all too often surveys such as yours look only at the USA and ignore the vast majority of people who live elsewhere.

[nick101]

I'm sorry, but this doesn't really help me at all. I do appreciate your work but:

1. I live in the UK. Neither the Sony nor the B&N stores are available to me.
2. Although I can access the Kindle store, I'm surcharged (compared to USA customers) and I have much less choice of books.
3. I own a Sony reader and I buy ebooks from anywhere that (a) offers a compatible format (of which there are many) and (b) a competitive price. Actually, I have no choice but to be a bookstore tart because of 1 and 2 above.

The situation will be roughly the same for anyone not in the USA (possibly slightly less bad for Canadians).

What we really need is an analysis that reflects price and availability world-wide - that's the only way to tell which readers/stores provide the best service.

[ishish]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

How is the search performed? Since the eBook Search does not return actual links to ebooks it is difficult to check manually, however RingWorld under Hugos (for example) seems to be reporting bogus results. What I think is happening is that B&N and Sony are returning RingWorld's Children as a hit and Amazon is correctly reporting this separately.

Wherever possible we try to do an ISBN search but in this case you're right the titles got mismatched. I'll fix it and report back to you. Thanks for the catch.

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Wherever possible we try to do an ISBN lookup to be as accurate as possible but unfortunately ISBN is not as standardized as you would think. I agree we should put links to the actual stores -- we'll add that in. Thanks for the suggestion. Yes the Ringworld lookup is a bug. I'm going to fix it and let you know when we have. Thank you for finding this (And troubleshooting it).

Another strange case is Double Star, which is published by FictionWise but is only listed as available on the Kindle. This is a case of FictionWise not providing their multi-format titles explicitly on B&N or Sony sites (which is very strange in the case of B&N, which owns FictionWise).

Yes we need to add more stores in our search. Right now we're only doing the main ones associated with the specific eReaders. We will work on it.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Ish

[ishish]

Originally Posted by nick101

I'm sorry, but this doesn't really help me at all. I do appreciate your work but:

1. I live in the UK. Neither the Sony nor the B&N stores are available to me.
2. Although I can access the Kindle store, I'm surcharged (compared to USA customers) and I have much less choice of books.
3. I own a Sony reader and I buy ebooks from anywhere that (a) offers a compatible format (of which there are many) and (b) a competitive price. Actually, I have no choice but to be a bookstore tart because of 1 and 2 above.

The situation will be roughly the same for anyone not in the USA (possibly slightly less bad for Canadians).

What we really need is an analysis that reflects price and availability world-wide - that's the only way to tell which readers/stores provide the best service.

Interesting problem that I didn't even know about. We'll look into how we might be able to provide this information. Thanks!

Ish

[ishish]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Hi Ish,

This is useful, but...

... there is one vitally important question. In what way - if any - are you taking regional restrictions into account? Eg, if you have a Kindle and you live outside the USA, the range of eBooks available to you is dramatically less than it is if you live in the USA. Also, the Sony Store is really only relevent to people in the USA; if you live in the UK and you own a Sony, you're far more likely to buy your books from Waterstones or W.H. Smiths.

I don't mean to be critical, but all too often surveys such as yours look only at the USA and ignore the vast majority of people who live elsewhere.

Harry,

To answer your questions. We are not currently taking regional restrictions into account. In all honesty I did not know this was such a big issue but now that I do I'll see how we might be able to add some functionality to help you out.

Thanks for the tip on the sony titles. We need to add more stores into our search -- right now we are just doing three : Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Sony.

Thanks for being critical. The goal of this site is to useful so we'll keep plugging away.

Ish

[ishish]

Originally Posted by dsvick

It looks nice and could be useful - have fun maintaining it

One question though instead of saying that a book is not available on a certain reader are you basing it on whether or not the book is available through the store associated with the reader? That is not exactly the same thing and can be very misleading. For example any book available in ePub can be read *on* the Sony, the nook, and I think the iRex.

This is a good point. Right now we have the main store associated with the reader. In the case of the Kindle this is a 1 to 1. But in the other readers its true we need to expand our search across more stores.

Ish

[dsvick]

Here's a challenge, it would be the most useful thing, which also makes it the most difficult....

Have the search come back with all of the formats a book is available in and the store/location with the lowest price for each format.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by nick101

What we really need is an analysis that reflects price and availability world-wide - that's the only way to tell which readers/stores provide the best service.

Since geographic restrictions are imposed on the bookseller, rather than being imposed *by* them, I don't see how including that in an analysis would help rate the booksellers. Unless maybe some booksellers are able to negotiate an exemption to the restrictions imposed on other booksellers? I've never heard of that happening, but I suppose it's possible.

[nick101]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

Since geographic restrictions are imposed on the bookseller, rather than being imposed *by* them, I don't see how including that in an analysis would help rate the booksellers. Unless maybe some booksellers are able to negotiate an exemption to the restrictions imposed on other booksellers? I've never heard of that happening, but I suppose it's possible.

1. Although publishers (curse them) do impose restrictions, they're not necessarily uniform - so different booksellers might be on different terms. Any independent seller will confirm that the big guys get better deals. Certainly that's the case with treebooks, so I think it's a fair inference that it's also the case with ebooks.

2. The question is: what's my best source of ebooks and, maybe by implication, what's my best ereader. If only Amazon sell ebooks for Kindle, then the 2 questions are the same. if, OTOH, many people sell ebooks for (say) Cool-er), the two questions might be separate.

[susan_cassidy]

Baen Books (www.webscription.net) has books in multiple format, for multiple readers, and is a major source for science fiction and fantasy books. For example, most of the books they publish are not available via Amazon for Kindle, but are available for Kindle if you go directly to www.webscription.net.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

Since geographic restrictions are imposed on the bookseller, rather than being imposed *by* them, I don't see how including that in an analysis would help rate the booksellers. Unless maybe some booksellers are able to negotiate an exemption to the restrictions imposed on other booksellers? I've never heard of that happening, but I suppose it's possible.

It doesn't help rate the bookseller, but it does help rate the device. Eg, the Kindle is very much less "good" in terms of its range of books for people outside the US compared to those in the US.