As long as Amazon is out-of-stock there’s probably no incentive for them to come up with creative ideas to spur more demand for the Kindle. Assuming they’ll actually get to a point where they have plenty of units on-hand and want to drive more sales, they ought to consider what Paul L. suggests on Kindle Korner.
In short, Paul suggests that Amazon offer books for the Kindle before they’re available in print. Publishers have absolutely nothing to lose on this deal, btw. Bear in mind that most books are (or could be) available in electronic format 2-4 weeks (or more) before they appear in print on bookstore shelves. Amazon could use this opportunity to offer the content on the Kindle as an exclusive deal for, say, a 30-day period.
Given the right author, some percentage of rabid fans would no doubt consider this to be the reason to take the plunge and buy a Kindle…or it would at least help them justify it in their mind.
Imagine a world in which Amazon has cut a deal with a number of publishers and will now have new books from all the top-selling authors available only on the Kindle for the first 30 days. Buy it on the Kindle and read it before the print version even shows up in your local store. Pretty compelling.
Joe, I’d very respectfully disagree. I wouldn’t have problems with a smaller store offering limited exclusives. But Amazon dominates the online book trade, and it would be a shame to tie content so closely to a particular device. That would give Amazon even more power over publishers and readers. I also worry about other e-retailers dong the same thing in a big way–maybe even without the month-only angle–and balkanizing the market. We already might have a little of this in the p-book world, where at least one large chain publishes its on books (not sure if other chains can stock them).
Glad to read your thoughts, though. Considering all the Kindle criticism from me and other TeleBlog regulars, it’s nice to have another view.
I’d encourage others to comment, in a nonflaming way. Am I missing something, or is Joe right?
Happy holidays,
David
Baen Books has a somewhat similar product: the ARC (Advance Reader Copy), which is an unproofed manuscript. It is more expensive than the final e-book and does not contain rights to the final published version (pay twice for the e-book), but does get you a the work well ahead of publication.
I have never bought an ARC, but I do selectively buy Baen’s monthly Webscriptions which get you half a book 2 months in advance. I always wait for the full copy though.
Regarding Baen’s earcs, I bought a lot of them and I love the idea. I buy regular print arcs off E-bay too once in a while, and for quite a few of those books (Baen e-arcs or regular arcs) I buy the hc version too.
However in order for this idea to work the window of reading should be at least 3-4 months before release the way Baen does it.
Also tying it to a proprietary device like Kindle is not going to work since how many Kindles will be around. Do anyone believes that by this year’s end there will be more than 50-100k at the tops…
Any exclusivity for Amazon (or any other ebook seller, for that matter) would probably be a bad idea. If business for ebooks picked up with that seller in that month-long-buy-it-only-from-us period, how long would it be before that seller started trying to get exclusive ebook rights to sell those titles? Imagine eBabel then. Sorry, but this publisher’s ebooks are for sale only from Amazon for the Kindle; this one’s are available only from ereader, and if you read ebooks on a Blackberry you’re out of luck. Say the Harry Potters come out as ebooks — oops, Sony Reader only, so all you folks who use Palms or Pocket PCs can forget it. At least now, you can generally find titles in more than one format and from more than one retailer (though not always — for instance, Jeff Gomez’s Print Is Dead has yet to show up from ereader, Fictionwise, Diesel, or Books on Board; looks like it’s only being sold through Amazon, MobiPocket’s site at full price, and Sony.)
Now, if ebook editions in multiple formats and not just for the Kindle were released early through multiple retailers, that’d be terrific. If nothing else, it would save some of us the annoyance of picking up a p-title because an ebook hasn’t shown up from the e-retailers only to see the ebook released a few weeks later.
Bests to all,
–tr
I agree that tying it to one device is a recipe for disaster. what about the many ereaders out here on the WORLD wide web who are not American and therefore can’t buy or use a Kindle? No, we need to be moving into MORE open models, not less open ones. The book industry is struggling enough to attract readers as is.
I do like TR’s idea of getting e-editions early, though. Imagine what it would have done for the ebook industry is JK Rowling had released an e-version of the last Harry Potter book a month early—but only for e-versions. I guarantee you, there would be cheap, good readers by now, just to meet the demand that sort of event would create.
Maybe THAT is the solution. One of us e-educated types needs to become super-famous and release a book soon 🙂
I realize “exclusivity” is a dangerous word and perhaps I shouldn’t have been so bold as to suggest it with this idea. More on that in a moment. For now, I hope we can all agree that the notion of having an e-book version available prior to the p-book showing up is a good idea. Further, the delays involved in printing and shipping should enable most publishers to pull this off, assuming, of course, they have a viable e-content production system in place.
Now, back to the exclusivity suggestion… This would really be determined jointly by publisher and distributor (Amazon, in this case). If there’s no incentive for the publisher to go exclusively with one distributor then you can bet they won’t. That said, I’m very bullish about Amazon’s Kindle, which is one of the reasons why I launched the Kindleville blog last month (www.kindleville.com). Although no one device maker has been able to make a huge splash in the e-book space I think Amazon has the right formula to do just that. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them with 90%+ market share in the next 12 months. (That’s just me speaking as a consumer, not as a publisher!) If that happens, and if publishers make their e-books available early to all device makers, doesn’t one player’s 90%+ share almost make it an exclusive deal by default?
Finally, as an idealist, I too hope that Amazon will open their platform up to support all devices and content formats. But, the realist in me says that they’ll only do so if they feel market pressures from remaining proprietary. The Kindle remains in a sold-out state on Amazon.com and although that doesn’t necessarily mean a large number are already in use, Amazon won’t have any incentive to open up their system/device as long as they can achieve their own sales goals, right? The real test on this doesn’t happen till some point in 2008 when the device is readily available and demand can be more easily measured.
Great reply, Joe, and thanks for your hopes that Amazon will be more open. I think the Kindle will do fine. But as folks here have noted, it’s just a fraction of the potential market for e-books. The old-time print folks will go for the Kindle. Younger shoppers may be more open to books on cellphones and the rest. Thanks. David
Plus, let us not forget that right now, the Kindle is locked to American buyers only! That is a huge problem right now and will prevent it from becoming a market leader no matter what else they might do. A lower price, an open format and an international market, and they may become the ipod for books. But not if only Americans can partake.
Joe,
Re the 90% market share going to Amazon — would you mean Amazon owning 90% of the market in dedicated ebook readers, or 90% of the market in sales of ebooks overall regardless of format? If the former, that still leaves plenty of room for ebooks on general purpose devices like PCs, smartphones, and PDAs, all of which have a far larger customer base than the dedicated readers are likely to have for a while (though I don’t have numbers on how many people use their devices for ebooks). If the latter, might we soon see the end of eBabel as more publishers fall in line with the Kindle format, and only the Kindle format (and its restrictive DRM)?
Bests,
–tr