The Bookseller reports on a Bowker UK survey that the overall value of consumer book purchases in the UK has dropped 9% since 2008. Bowker blames the decrease on the rise of e-books—even though people are buying more e-books, the price of the e-books tends to be lower (especially since so many of them are self-published). E-books made up 5% of consumer book purchases by volume in the fourth quarter of 2011, but only 3% of the book market by value.
According to Bowker, that low average e-book price is due not least to purchases from self-publishers and new media companies, which the research company puts at “perhaps a fifth” of total e-book purchases by volume in 2011 although just 4% by value.
Of course, this only applies to the UK, whose e-book market is 12 to 15 months behind the US where e-book market share is concerned. It would be interesting to see what the equivalent statistics for the US look like, especially since the publishing industry has actually decreased the amount of money it earns per book due to agency pricing.
The overall value may have dropped but surely that is offset by the fact that producing Ebooks is a lot cheaper than producing paper books?
FWIW, I suspect that the US market would show the same results. I know that before ebooks, I spent an average of $5,000 a year on pbooks, almost all hardcovers, but since the advent of ebooks, my spending on pbooks has declined by at least 50%. My ebook purchases haven’t made up the difference because I rarely buy any agency ebooks, rarely buy an indie ebook that costs more than $2.99, and probably 90% of all ebooks I have “purchased” have had a final price of free.
And with agency pricing, publishers get 70% of the retail price, not about 50%.
Paul – Exactly. Revenue will be down but margins and profits up. The Agency group is creaming it.