Publishers Making like Ostriches: Hide Heads in Sand
While I’ve written about why, at least for me, e-books will never replace real books, I am finding the attitude of some publishers toward the format to be rather like hoping the problem will just go away if you ignore it or bluster at it enough.
Publishers should take a lesson from the mistakes of the music industry, and look at e-books not as an attack on the publishing industry, but as an evolution of it. Instead of fighting the change, we should be looking at ways to embrace this new technology.
For the companies completely denying the e-book consumer by refusing to provide e-book versions, a significant portion of the market will be entirely lost, because there will be people who will simply not buy the book at all, unless they can get it electronically. This would be the worst example of hiding in the sand, because it would mean those books that aren’t available as e-books would lose the potential sales that they would otherwise have had.
Several large publishing companies, such as Simon & Schuster and Random House, are setting delays between the release of hardcopy editions of books and the e-book versions, which could be a valid compromise, encouraging those who are truly excited to get the book to go out and buy it at their bookstore. It would set up a delay rather similar to the delay between a theatrical release of a movie and the DVD release.
But here’s the thing: There will always be a group of sincere and devoted bibliophiles, like myself, willing to pay more for a beautifully crafted hardcover edition of their favorite books, but these will never be the “average reader.”
For the average reader, the ones already willing to wait for the cheaper paperback versions of books, waiting a few more months for the similarly cheaper and more convenient to purchase e-book won’t bother them one bit. If a book they want is not yet available, well, they’re just more likely to go back and buy something else that is available instead.
It’s a difficult situation, and compromises will have to be made to make this new market work like it should, but the response to this new technology should not be one of fear or antagonism. E-books are inevitable. They’re already here. Publishers are going to have to learn ways to profit from them, or they’re going to be left in the dust.
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