German Book Publishers Cool To E-Book Market

Now that the Kindle is being actively marketed in many countries outside the US, reader rsmiller510 sends in his piece up on DaniWeb about the skepticism in Germany about the whole e-book phenomenon. A major difference from the US book market is that in Germany, book prices are regulated in an effort to protect authors, publishers, and small booksellers. As a result, publishers don't issue electronic versions of their books until the paperback edition comes out, up to 2 years after the hardcover — and then they sell the e-book for the same price as the lowest-cost paperback. An article on e-books in Spiegel.de notes a survey taken recently for the Frankfurt Book Fair, which found that "only one in 12 Germans has a clear idea about what an e-book is, and seven out of 10 of them would prefer a printed version over a digital one." 65,000 e-books were sold in Germany in the first 6 months of 2009, vs. almost ten times that number bought per week in the US, in what is still a small niche of the overall book business.

Comments

Another e-book story...

[Starker_Kull]

...that hits all the same notes. E-books will take over the world, why are the German publishing houses sticking their heads in the sand, etc. I've thought about it quite a bit, since I have a strong personal preference for printed books, and have debated the topic with passionate advocates of e-books. I've come to a few conclusions:

1) The advantages that printed books have over e-books in terms of convenience will go away over the next 15 years. Limited resolution (200 ppi e-ink vs. 600+ ppi for print), limited battery life, bulk, storage capacity, etc., not to mention cost (not just direct, but transportation, storage, disposal, etc.), will all favor e-books in 15 years. Resolution (my particular nit) will probably take the longest, but it will happen.

2) I doubt a personal e-book 'reader' will last long in the marketplace. It's too big and bulky to be 'just' an e-book reader. Why not make it a web-browser? 95% percent of what you need to do that is there. E-mail? Terminal access? A cell phone with a bluetooth earbud? A movie watcher? It will become a general purpose computing device just like cell phones are becoming.

3) It won't succeed until an Apple-like company makes it so stunningly easy to use and manage that its advantages are clear. A cellphone and a smart cellphone are quite similar, so the idea of an iPhone/Treo (a general purpose computer that happens to be a cell phone) was not so hard to get accepted. A tablet-like device has no commonly existing parellel right now, and the existing examples are weak, to put it mildly. It will have to be wildly simple and pleasant to use...

4) Once most books are no longer printed, it remains an open question whether it will make censorship of ideas easier or harder. I haven't been able to come up with a convincing argument either way. DRM is also still an open question, although you can make a good argument that a DRMed device will fail in the marketplace. Maybe.

There will be a great e-book reader one day, but it won't be called that. It will be part of a package that can do far more.

That's a scary thought

[AnotherUsername]

I pray that you are wrong. I triy to imagine future anthropologists and historians trying to figure out what life was like during our time, and if your idea comes true, they will have nothing to base their studies on. Paper is valuable because, unlike a computer(which your hypothetical all-in-one e-book reader appears to be), it doesn't require electricity to read, file formats are a nonissue(as long as you can understand the language, you can read it), and as long as it is kept in good environmental conditions, it will last much longer in a usable form. If books ever completely go away, historical studies of our time are doomed before they begin.

Same as in France alright

[Nicolas MONNET]

Same kind of stupidity here, esp. the part about the intellectual elite. Fucking douchebags hate the internet, and the internet hates them in turn.

I would point out that the US situation is not significantly different wrt ebooks. When you factor out the difference in book prices, US ebooks (and audiobooks) are still way overpriced, close to the hardcover price.

Well in fact it's the electronic delivery that's fucked up. I love audiobooks, so that I can "read" while on bicycle, and I wanted to buy Bob Woodward's "the War Within." It's $24 in hardcover, and $20 through Audible.com. But I can't buy through audible, because the sons of bitches insist on fucktarded DRM, and don't support Linux anyway. So instead I bought it in CD format from a third party, for $10 shipping included. It's a complete waste, since I'm just going to waste time ripping it.

Ebooks should be much cheaper than physical ones. Until they stop treating their customers like shit, they deserve all the piracy they get. Fucking fucktards.

I don't know about the Germans, but

[obarthelemy]

as a neighbour from France, which is culturally kinda close I guess, I don't grok the idea of buying content, but not really owning it, being at risk of losing it at any time, either short-term (Amazon pulling it, my reader getting stolen...) or medium/long term (Amazon going out of that business, their readers starting to suck...)

I'd like a Digital Ownership Law, clearly asserting
- resale rights
- loan rights
- transfer rights (to another reader)
- backup rights
- standardized DRM with a backup infrastructure in case the initial provider can no longer authenticate content/users.

Right now, Amazon's plan looks like MS's and Apple's: get user lock-in DRM / format / training / force of habit / DRM.

I think the next generation of readers, wich will probably be more geared towards replacing magazines, and hopefully integrating the magazines with an on-line community, will have more appeal over here.

PS: I am reading books an a Palm right now, so I'm not allergic to the concept. Buyers' rights just seem inexistant right now.