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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: 2) by VLM on Friday February 23 2018, @02:55PM
My Mother in Law cranks the font size up to match her vision quality somewhat dynamically day to day based on location light levels etc.
Delivery is instant. Done with book 2 of a series, enjoyed it and want to read the next? Here's book 3 in about two minutes.
Text book style references are dying, why would I grep a ebook when google will search a better explanation from a web page quicker than the ebook reader, but sometimes its convenient to be able to search a book.
With respect to lack of creativity I'm VERY glad of that as I am old enough to remember when mixing try-hard motivation at work with early desktop publishing technology meant every meaningless memo required 27 different fonts in 17 different colors making professional communication look like a cross between a ransom note and a kids art project. Thanks but no thanks, please don't "innovate" my ebooks please please please.
Maybe I'm overly lazy, but I've read some big books and physically holding them up and messing with them and carrying them is pretty annoying compared to my weightless kindle. My son whines about having to hold a heavy school-provided ipad while reading school assigned literature ebooks. Well, kid, in the old days we carried dead wood books and they sometimes weighed like 5 pounds each and were huge like ten times as thick as a laptop and sometimes you had to carry three or four to a college class, uphill in the snow both ways...
Now if you want a weird rant, how about EVERY freaking marketing photo for ebook readers involves water. WTF you weirdos can't read unless you're near 50000+ gallons of water, you think the incendiary words on the pages are literally going to light the thing up as you read, or is this some kind of stealth commentary on lithium ion batteries bursting into flame (I'm not saying you need to carry a fire extinguisher with your ebook reader, but you do see every marketing photo involves the models less than a yard from the ocean in case of fire...) Another oddity is the narrow target market, little kids, female swimsuit models, and twiggy soyboys. Ironically everyone I know who owns a ebook reader is NOT one of the categories marketed toward. Teens, cat ladies, middle-aged-ish men, fat women, elderly people, pretty much everyone who isn't in the marketing photos, which is kinda weird, it would be like marketing female hygiene products where all the spokesmodels are men. Amazon marketing people are kinda weird in general, of course, if you've seen their other ads.