Friday, November 15, 2013

Publishing crisis? Time to create a Spotify for books

Publishers must learn the lessons from music streaming services around pricing and sourcing for their subscription models to work

Wednesday 13 November 2013   

Kindle
Faisal Galaria: 'The digitisation of books should not be seen as a threat for publishers, rather a new way forward.' Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Dark clouds appear to be looming over the publishing industry. Figures released last week by accountants Wilkins Kennedy revealed that 98 UK publishers went bust over the last year, a rise of 42% on the previous year. Though this figure is stark, there's evidence elsewhere to believe that all is not necessarily lost for the publishing industry.
While print sales of books stayed fairly static in 2012, falling just 1% to £2.9bn, the real success story was the ebook, rising 134% to £216m, according to the UK Publishers Association. The huge rise can be explained by a low base, but the reality is that ebooks now represent nearly 10% of book publishers' total sales.

Publishers have been hit by the rise of the second-hand book market, but the fact that print sales have remained steady shows the opportunity in the sector. Along with the rise in ebooks, the signs actually look positive.

Not everyone has taken to ebooks. They don't feel the same as books, nor do they look like books. Essentially, to some people, they simply do not provide the same satisfaction as a printed volume.
There are parallels with the music industry, where a similar argument was made for vinyl rather than the compact discs which followed in the 1980s. And it could actually be argued that the critics had more of a point - vinyl was widely accepted to be of much better quality than its successors.
But that didn't stop the rise of digital music.

Indeed there are lessons to be learned from the disruption witnessed in the music industry. Napster, iTunes and torrents all shook the inner core of the music industry, but it was eventually the iPod that caused the decline of the CD business.

The publishing industry's equivalents are the tablets and e-readers. These will eventually do the same to the publishing industry as the iPod did to the music industry, providing readers with aggregation, convenience, social discovery and immediacy.
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