Saturday, June 16, 2012

Kobo, Hive and Anobii pitch e-book options to indies



Independent bookshops are to have access to Kobo e-book devices, a Hive-sourced e-book tablet and an Anobii-run affiliates scheme as part of a range of methods aimed at helping booksellers sell e-books to their customers, as print book sales hit a nine-year low and the number of high street bookshops continues to fall.
The measures were outlined at a meeting organised by the BA as part of its a.g.m. yesterday (14th June) held at the Foyles’ Gallery on Charing Cross Road, London.

Before the meeting, Falmouth bookseller owner and publisher Ron Johns told The Bookseller indies were "desperate" for the ability to sell e-books. "Frankly, we look like idiots when we are a bookshop and can't offer customers one format of book, being digital," he said.
Kobo’s vice-president of content, sales and marketing Michael Tamblyn flew in from Canada to speak at the a.g.m., hoping to persuade around 100 booksellers—a record turn-out of BA members—that they should choose the Kobo model to retail e-books to members.
Speaking about tailoring their model in order to be a strong competitor to Amazon, he said: “When we are fighting against a competitor that wants you dead, you have to give everything you have. We have come up with a model that works, a way for bricks and mortar retailers to gain.”
He went on to explain that Kobo’s package is based on the "origination model", whereby a bookseller can sell an e-book to a customer through a "light integration" device on the bookseller's website. As long as customers give an original email address to booksellers, then bookshops will receive a percentage of every Kobo book sold from then on, whether they come into the shop to buy the e-book or not.
One bookseller asked what would happen if a customer came in with a Kobo e-reader they had bought from W H Smith, Kobo’s chain partner bookseller in the UK. Tamblyn answered: “It is quite difficult to change the e-attribution once it is already done. It is the same problem in the case of e-attribution between multiple independents, it is quite difficult to solve that.”

Full story at The Bookseller


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