Three articles have sparked my thinking on this post. The are:
The Charlie Stross piece entitled Cutting their own throats, Joseph Esposito’s insightful post on How B&N Can Take a Bite Out of Amazon, and The New York Times article, The Bookstore’s Last Stand
Stross talks about how the publishing industry has allowed Amazon to use DRM as a tool against itself. Esposito suggests “B&N needs an MCI solution” while the Times piece encourages B&N to have a sense of urgency in avoiding the same fate as Borders.
Rolling all of these together I have a radical, three-step suggestion for William Lynch, CEO of B&N:
Get publishers to understand they need to get out of their comfort zones before one player in the publishing ecosystem establishes what could become an irreversibly dominant position. Start distributing ebooks not only in EPUB format, but also in mobi format. Do it all DRM-free. Yes, I realize I’m asking for a lot here, but I think it’s time for bold moves from the brick-and-mortar leader. If Lynch implements what I’ve described above then suddenly bn.com is able to sell content to those millions of Kindle owners (not to mention owners of pretty much every other ereading device). More importantly, bn.com becomes the content destination for every smart consumer who doesn’t want to get locked in to any particular hardware device or content vendor.
The risk to B&N? They lose some nook sales along the way…maybe. I’m not convinced that would happen though. What B&N would really do is radically expand their base of potential ebook customers and earn some serious goodwill as they break down the walls of DRM and platform lock-in. And so what if they were to lose some nook sales? All reports indicate B&N represents less than half Amazon’s ebook device market share. Whatever they stand to lose in hardware sales could easily be made up in ebook sales to all those Kindle owners who want the peace of mind that they’ll be able to read their library on any device in the future.
In today’s world the winner is the company with the deepest pockets who can afford to sell devices and content at a loss longer than the competition can. In the world I’m describing the best device and content provider wins. I like the world I’m describing much better than the one we live in today. How about you?”
I think this is a good idea. Fictionwise (a BN subsidiary) has had a little-known Kindle store, so it isn’t as if BN isn’t aware of the possibilities. I think, though, that the key is a “buy one, get forever” marketing strategy. If you have a Kindle but might want something else some day, buy fromm BN. If you have a Nook but aren’t sure that BN will be here forever, buy from BN. The problem is that Amazon, with its Kindle apps, already does a good job reducing the fear factor. Still, we’re talking about what BN needs to do. Not sure if they can win with this, but clearly they lose if their marketing strategy is “we’re just like Amazon but without the marketing share or financial backing.”
“Fictionwise (a BN subsidiary) has had a little-known Kindle store”
Isn’t that closed now ? Correct me if I am wrong …
I will simply repeat what I said at Nate’s website:
What is it with DRM and some ebook commenters? It is a misreading to believe that Amazon’s success has much to do with DRM, or that abandoning it would hurt said company. More the reverse really.
I mean you have to be totally naive to believe publishers could get away with DRM free books at B&N and not Amazon. So where is this supposed advantage?
“In the world I’m describing the best device and content provider wins.” We are already in that world.
The publishers would never allow their content to be sold DRM-free. They are firm believers in DRM stopping piracy, despite the evidence that suggests the opposite.
I’m guessing that Amazon would like to sell ebooks DRM-free just like they do music, but are hamstrung by publishers.
B&N also has customer service issues. Unlike Amazin, you can’t return an ebook for any reason and it’s difficult to return a defective Nook.
I would like to add: “Get rid of those geographical restrictions and start selling worldwide.”
There is a whole world to win, even with English ebooks. I know geographical restrictions are caused by publishers, but B&N are more strict than the publishers. They refuse to sell me ebooks whereas other shops, e.g. Amazon and Kobo do sell the same books. And moreover, they can sell ebooks to other geographical regions by getting them from the publishers that do have the rights for these regions. And they should urge publishers to get rid of this 19th century system in the 21st century. It is silly that I can get a paper book from them but not the ebook version.
All this is more work for them but that is the only way to survive.
I’d like to repeat what Piet has said above. Case in point: I have a British fiction series I love. All 5 novels have been out in England for *years*, but the ebooks for the last 2 aren’t available here in the U.S. I was fortunate; I bought them from UK-based retailers before the publisher (or someone) cracked down on the sale to the U.S., but friends I’ve recommended the books to are out of luck.
Someone please explain to me the advantages to the publisher (or the retailers) to limiting where an ebook can be sold. In this case it’s not as if the publisher would really have to put forth any effort at all since the books are already available as ebooks.
Okay, I had to check the calendar on this one.
It’s not yet Feb 1st, much less April first, so I guess I should try to take this seriously.
.
.
Okay, I tried. Really.
But…
Come on, people!
B&N sell DRM-free mobi achieves what?
Amazon would still have generally lower ebook prices, a much bigger catalog, a direct multi-platform synchronization pipeline (aka Whispernet), Kindle cloud, Prime Library, a hundred thousand exclusives and hundreds of freebies a week.
Amazon isn’t racking up 60-plus percent ebooks market share (if we believe the NYT) because of their DRM!
And they don’t have a 20-30 million installed base because their (admittedly good) hardware and software is all that much better than the competition.
Kindles sell because of the service and the content.
Because in the ongoing ebook war between consumers and big publishers they chose to go with the money; the consumers.
Now, I do understand some people hate Amazon with a passion. Fine. But passion shouldn’t override judgement. People buy Kindles because they *prefer* the Amazon ecosystem. People who don’t, buy something else.
Let’s face reality here: there are way more Nook (and Sony, and other ADEPT epub) owners pining for access to the Amazon store than Kindle owners pining for B&N ebooks.
So, unless B&N is going to start an ebook pricing war with Amazon, doubling their back-end costs in order to try and poach a few customers from amazon will achieve little to nothing.
Unless you actually want B&N to hit chapter 11 sooner rather than later…