Have eBooks Peaked?

An anonymous reader writes "At Rough Type, Nicholas Carr examines the surprisingly sharp drop in the growth rate for e-book sales. In the U.S., the biggest e-book market, annual sales growth dropped to just 5% in the first quarter of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, while the worldwide e-book market actually shrank slightly, according to Nielsen. E-books now account for about 25% of total U.S. book sales — still a long way from the dominance most people expected. Carr speculates about various reasons e-books may be losing steam. He wonders in particular about 'the possible link between the decline in dedicated e-readers (as multitasking tablets take over) and the softening of e-book sales. Are tablets less conducive to book buying and reading than e-readers were?' He suggests that the e-book may end up playing a role more like the audiobook — a complement to printed books rather than a replacement."

Comments

Definitions

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the word you're looking for is "plateaued". Does no-one do calculus any more?

Disappearance of E-Ink

[ElementOfDestruction]

Vendors are flogging tablets over E-ink; why get a one trick pony when you can have a multi-tasker.

Truth is, the one-trick pony feels much better on the eyes after reading for any extended amount of time. Staring at a backlit LCD just burns out your retinas, and changes reading from a relaxing experience to a tolerable situation.

Re:Disappearance of E-Ink

[mark-t]

The problem isn't backlighting, per se... it has to do with the difference between how bright what you are looking at is lit compared to ambient lighting... the pupils in your eyes adjust according to how much light they are receiving, and if what you are looking at is too much more brightly lit than your surroundings, it's going to feel like you are reading while staring into a flashlight. If, however (mostly because of limitations in most current backlit display technologies), the display is not brightly lit, then there will not be enough contrast on the display to actually read it. LCD readers which try to adjust their brightness dynamically based on surrounding lighting might mitigate this to a certain extent, but they are still only usable within a relatively narrow range of lighting conditions compared to what conditions a person could comfortably read a book in.

Sure...

[Mashiki]

Because they're charging the same price as a paperback, or hardcover, sometimes even more.

Re:Sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

$1 per book once it hits paperback, and you'll see ebooks rocket, ereaders become the next big thing, and therefore, people will be lapping up cheap content. Spending $15 on a book that's available for less in a B&M store puts people off. Maybe a buck is too low, perhaps $3 will be a sweet spot. There's too much shit available from self-published wannabies right now. Proper books will still sell on paper, a lot of us prefer the media, but there's a whole planet of people that will buy books. Once they've committed to some hardware, whether that's a kindle of other e-ink device doesn't matter, they'll be looking to load it up.

Publishers need to face reality, their wares will make a lot more money for them and the authors, once e-books aren't a total and complete fucking rip-off.

Same price ?

[PIBM]

You pay the same price, but then you can't lend them easily to your friends or resell them, you can't rent them from the local library, depending on the device used, annotating or marking the pages is not effective and can't easily be shared between two people reading the same book at the same time (keep slowly browsing through to get to the current page), and you need to have that device charged up (more or less a problem depending on the device type). Beside having it instantly and the lighting on the kindle paperwhite / kobo glow for night reading, there's not much to like :(

More buck for the bang?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Perhaps it may have to do something with the price fixing scandal?

(I love it when publishers tell the public that e-books can't get cheaper because paper isn't actually that much of an expense and people need to get paid for the work, while the authors and translators are told in private that they can't get paid more because "paper and the printer shop costs too much".)

Apple

[jbolden]

Something not mentioned was Apple pushing the price of ebooks up often by 25%. In general the main reason I haven't switched is that from Amazon used I frequently can get print books much cheaper than the corresponding ebooks. At the time ebooks were surging ebook prices were crashing and there was a huge difference between the ebook and the printed book price. Perhaps, not unreasonably, many people prefer printed books and given a high ebook price there weren't be a cut over.

Re:Piracy!

[ShanghaiBill]

Here's the reason I rarely buy e-books: A used paper book is usually cheaper. On Amazon a used book is often only $0.01 (plus $3.99 shipping). When I am done reading it, I drop it off at the local Goodwill, which then sells it on Amazon.

Re:Piracy!

[seyfarth]

I frequently face the same issue. The solution is to drop the price of e-books. I suggest less than 50% of the printed book price. I find it frustrating to see an e-book for $10 when a printed one is $12. I can easily resell or give away the printed book, which makes it a lot more valuable. If the e-book were $6, then perhaps I wouldn't care for the printed copy. Also a printed copy for $4 with shipping is not a big deal versus $6.

Re:Piracy!

[arth1]

Here's the reason I rarely buy e-books: A used paper book is usually cheaper. On Amazon a used book is often only $0.01 (plus $3.99 shipping). When I am done reading it, I drop it off at the local Goodwill, which then sells it on Amazon.

For me, it's not price, although I do think that e-books should be priced a lot cheaper because they cost a lot less to produce. No, the main reason is that I know that I'll still have the book I bought when I hit retirement. It's still readable.
With e-books, I know no such thing.
What I do know is that the books I bought in PeanutPress/eReader format (Peanutpress got bought by Palm who sold it to Motricity who sold it to Fictionwise who sold it to Barnes & Noble), I can no longer download or change the lock on. B&N killed it, with no compensation to the customers.
They can't do that with paper books. They're mine, and will be readable in my retirement years too.

Re:Piracy!

[Immerman]

And *that* I think is the heart of the issue. Most publishers seem to charge as much or more for the ebook version, despite the fact that the incremental cost of an e-book approaches zero. Lets see some of those cost savings passed on to the consumer, and get rid of the ridiculous DRM that prevents me from actually owning the book, and then lets talk. In the meantime I'll stick to Project Gutenberg and DRM-free niche publishers.