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Arnaud Nourry, the CEO of Lagardère Publishing (the parent company of Hachette Book Group), gave an interview to Scroll.in in which he claims, "the eBook is a stupid product."
In the US and UK, the ebook market is about 20% of the total book market, everywhere else it is 5%-7% because in these places the prices never went down to such a level that the ebook market would get significant traction. I think the plateau, or rather slight decline, that we're seeing in the US and UK is not going to reverse. It's the limit of the ebook format. The ebook is a stupid product. It is exactly the same as print, except it's electronic. There is no creativity, no enhancement, no real digital experience. We, as publishers, have not done a great job going digital. We've tried. We've tried enhanced or enriched ebooks – didn't work. We've tried apps, websites with our content – we have one or two successes among a hundred failures. I'm talking about the entire industry. We've not done very well.
For an in-depth explanation of Arnaud Nourry's comments, we go to The Digital Reader:
Hachette's sales are low because Hachette keeps their ebook prices high. If you check the Author Earnings report, you will see that ebooks make up a significant part of the market. And it's not just a tiny group of readers who like ebooks; almost all of romance has gone digital, as well as around half of the SF market.
This guy understands so little about ebooks that it is almost frightening.
[...] They've tried enhanced ebooks, ebook apps, and even ebooks on websites, all because Nourry doesn't understand ebooks as a product. And soon they will be trying video games.
Let me say that again so it sinks in.
The CEO of a major multi-national book publishing conglomerate does not understand his company's products or his company's markets.
This point is so mind-boggling because it is really not that hard to find out why consumers like ebooks: just go ask them.
Consumers like ebooks because we can change the font size. We like ebooks because we can carry a hundred ebooks on a smartphone. We also like being able to search the text, add notes that can later be accessed from a web browser, and easily share those notes with other readers.
Here's an editorial rebuttal from The Guardian:
[...] The built-in, one-tap dictionary is a boon for Will Self fans. And as an author, I'm fascinated by the facility that shows you phrases other readers have highlighted; what is it about this sentence that resonated with dozens of humans? It's an illicit glimpse into the one place even a writer's imagination can never really go: readers' minds. And Kindle's Whispersync facility lets the reader fluidly alternate between reading a book and listening to it. What are these if not enhancements to the reading experience?
And then there's the simplest, most important enhancement of all: on any e-reader, you can enlarge the text. That in itself is a quiet revolution. Page-sniffers who dismiss ebooks out of hand are being unconsciously ableist. For decades the partially sighted were limited to the large print section of their local library, limited to only the usual, bestselling, suspects.
[...] Finally, Nourry claims there is no digital experience. Isn't that the point? If it's got graphics, noise or animation, it's no longer a book – it's a computer game or a movie. Just as I write disconnected from the internet and in silence, I don't want my books to do other stuff. The beauty of the book, in a world of digital noise, is the purity of the reading experience – and there's nothing stupid about that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @09:50PM (4 children)
This isn't 1818 its 2018. Time to move on. Most books do NOT need to be on dead trees. Its a waste of resources. Just the 'special books' need to be on (good) paper. And even those need an eBook option.
Now, we can talk all day about how bad DRM is, but the concept of an eBook is a great thing.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 24 2018, @11:51AM (3 children)
There is one good thing about paper books: They can take quite a bit of abuse without getting unusable.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 26 2018, @05:13PM (2 children)
There's other good things too:
1) You can resell them after the semester is over, and recoup some of your expenditure
2) They aren't locked into any particular device, and don't disappear if the vendor goes belly-up
3) You can read them in all lighting conditions without needing to buy a particular kind of device that isn't very popular and costs a lot because everyone wants to watch videos on their ebook reader
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday February 26 2018, @06:57PM (1 child)
(1) and (2) are DRM problems, not inherent ebook problems. Note that the post I replied to referred to the concept, not the current implementation.
Also note that even in the current real world, you can get free and DRM-free ebooks from the Gutenberg project; although admittedly not textbooks. Those free ebooks you can give to others (selling would be ripping them off, though, since you got them for free), and you can read them on any ebook reader, as well as on tablets, phones and desktop/laptop computers running about any current operating system.
(3) I don't see that. You can get a good ebook reader for about the cost a typical textbook, and certainly for less than two textbooks. No, you can't watch videos on those, but then, you cannot watch video on paper books either.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday February 26 2018, @07:43PM
1 and 2 are DRM problems, yes, but all the major ebook platforms use DRM so it's part-and-parcel. Gutenberg books are nice, but those are mainly really old classics and other stuff so old that copyright doesn't apply. That's not much help if you're looking for something modern (whether for entertainment, or because you want to read an up-to-date biology textbook).
3 is important because most ebook readers use backlit LCD screens. eInk screens do still exist, but they're much less common and more expensive, and the LCD screen readers (tablet computers really) are the ones being pushed the most and selling the most. Of course, you can (for now) still buy a screen with eInk and ignore what other people are buying, but now you have a device that cannot display color images! So much for looking at color illustrations in a scientific text, or reading a full-color magazine (such as one showing artwork or photography). I can read a paper copy of National Geographic just fine outside in the sunlight, but there's simply no way to do this with an e-reader.