paidContent reporting:
Book publishers’ greatest challenge now is discoverability in the digital age. How do they ensure that their ebooks and apps get found? How do they market directly to consumers? Brick-and-mortar bookstores that were once publishers’ main customers are disappearing and sales are moving online.“Our content has always been discovered by people either looking for it or recommending it,” said Charlie Redmayne, EVP and Chief Digital Officer of HarperCollins. “But now looking for it is through search and recommending it is through social media.” “Publishers do not know how to market e-books yet,” said Evan Schnittman, Managing Director of Group Sales and Marketing at Bloomsbury, said.
» Oh yeah…and pricing is a pretty stiff challenge too. As book publishers have moved to the agency model—in which they set their own prices for e-books and the retailer (the Amazon Kindle Store, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iBookstore, or whoever) receives a commission—they are realizing there’s a lot they don’t know about that area. Traditionally, bookstores set their own prices and ran promotions. When Perseus Books Group set out to learn more about pricing, Joe Mangan, COO, said they realized how little they knew about it: “Online retailers were repricing books every two or four hours.”
» Gadget gossip. It was a huge week for e-reader announcements. On Monday, there was Kobo with its $129.99 eReader Touch Edition, which incorporates the company’s Reading Life social networking technology. On Tuesday morning, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) announced its new Nook, the $139 Simple Touch Reader, whose main claim to fame is its two-month battery life. CEO William Lynch said the Nook has captured over 25 percent of the e-book market. “Based on industry data, it is our belief that Nook Color is the bestselling Android tablet in the U.S., second only to the iPad,” he said. Apparently feeling left out, Amazon announced on Tuesday evening that it’s releasing a $164 Kindle 3G with Special Offers.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-what-we-learned-about-the-book-industry-this-week
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