eBooks – tipping points and

milestonesTerry O’Brien,Deputy Librarian,WIT Libraries.IIUG Tralee June 2011

“Without a doubt, the eBook is practically the biggest thing that’s hit the publishing industry since

the invention of movable type”(Philip Ruppel, CEO McGraw-Hill,

2011)

“inexorable rise of the eBook”(CIBER, UCL)

•Project Guttenberg 1st eBook

1971•Lau

nch of Amazon Kindle eReader

2008

•Amazon eBook sales surpass print sales

2011

Increased fees Huge library cuts More for less Library supplier consolidation Reach of Amazon, Apple, Google The iPad and the App The Cloud Retail damage

Context

10m digital album sales this year already iPad sold 3m units in first 80 days Netflix 23.6m subscribers Q1 2011 – DVD sales down 20% Downloading, subscription etc. up 33% Rise in social media, streaming services Access not ownership Kindle, Sony Reader and Nook can now all

borrow from libraries

Digital content surge

“Device that will change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish” (2008)

eReader is a game changer “paradigm shifting device”

Sales of eBook and Kindle have reached a “tipping point” (Jeff Bezos, 2011)

"the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point“

“Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.“

“It's a book about change … a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does”

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Malcolm Gladwell, Little Brown, 2000)

KindleBest selling

Amazon product

8m units

Amazon

1m eBooks80% - $0.99-$9.99

iPads 8m sold in Q2 2011

Est. 30m + 2011

Top selling self-published authors

Amanda Hocking

450,000+ sales in

March 2011

John Locke over 1m

eBook sales

Stephen Leather selling 2,000

eBooks per day

More ‘e’ than ‘p’

Amazon – eBook sales versus all print combined

105 100

Amazon eBook sales 2011 v 2010

3 1

Amazon - eBook sales v hardbacks

3 1

2007 Release

Xmas 2009 eBooks > Print

July 2010 eBooks > Hbks

Dec 2010 eBooks >Pbks

April 2010 eBooks > all books 105:100

Big player?

Bit Player?

No eBook has exceeded 1m sales, print +100m

Amazon has 20% of global book market

eBook sales represent just 1% of revenue

Amazon has 60% of global eBook market

eBook represent 6% of overall market

Paper (dead tree)

books as niche

product

“The overall e-book market is still a 90-pound weakling next to the Asiatic elephant of

print publishing”

Wired Magazine

Mainstream but not ubiquitous

More than ½ “best-selling” eBooks are free, many cost $0.99, many are erotica

Library books can now be downloaded (US)

4% m-on-m increase in available titles

What it means to read, new kinds of reading experiences

NY Times (2010) “yes, people read but now its social”

Lending clubs Suited to pure text -

fiction, rather than eTextbooks, iPad might address this

Amazon & Kindle

http://youtu.be/xIj5lpFQIK8

1m books available

Page nos. & annotations

Whisper sync

Lighter than a paperback

Battery life 1 month

£111 or $139

No glaree-ink display

Borrow from a library

Across devices and platforms

Storage 3,500

Mp3 support /

audio

Browser, wifi and 3G

Kindle

“Kindle eco-system expansion” eReaders “increase propensity to buy books

and content .. due to convenience, cost, 24/7”

Kindle revenues

Kindle growth (Carris & Co. Analysts, 2011)

2013 Est. 13.3m

2011 5.4m

2009 808,000

2008 85,000

Amazon does not disclose metrics Sales relates to volume not revenue Includes Kindle books not read on Kindle

devices Only 30% of Amazon book sales are in eBook

across all categories Even free books get a receipt on Amazon, but

are no longer counted in sales figures eBooks are cheaper for the consumer Kindle figures include sales of print books

where no Kindle editions are available

Amazon skepticism

Bloomsbury Publishers

“demand is for digital delivery, rendering traditional relationships irrelevant”

UK figures

• £79,000

2009

• £1.5m

2010 • £1.1m in Q1

2011

Penguin eBook revenues up 182% this year, 6% of global revenues

Hachette UK eBook sales quadrupled Q1 2011 70% of digital sales were from academic and

professional sales in 2010 but consumer drive has widened audiences

UK Amazon store selling Kindle books at ratio 2-1 hbks since 2011

Bookseller (UK) by 2015 50% ‘parity then plateau’ UK Publishers Association - £180m in 2010 eBooks subject to VAT German market now at a tipping point

UK figures – exponential growth

eBook sales up 176% in 2009

eBook sales up 169% 2010-2011

eBook revenue Feb 2011 $90m

Pbk revenues down 34% $81.2m

Association of American Publishers

eBooks largest single selling

format in the US (AAP)

March 2011 – print books

growth in US (AAP)

Adul

t Pbk

s 11

5.9m

Adul

t Hbk

s 96

.6m

eBoo

ks 6

9m

Relig

ious

63.

5m0

20406080

100120140

AAP publishing revenue sales 2010(Annual total revenue sales $1.75 bil-

lion)

revenue sales ($m)

ALA – ¾ public libraries offer eBooks 5% of American adults own some form of

eBook reader – Pew Internet estimates this will rise to 12% this summer

eBooks fastest segment of borrowed items categories

New York public library – highest circulating eBook library in USA - loans up 36%

Most checkouts take place on weekends eReaders download more books than book

buyers buy

American Library Association

Most popular eBooks Romance, mystery, crime most popular genres Short, quick reads, part of series, read in

succession, multiple buys Amazon customers buy 3.3 times as many books

after buying a Kindle Seasonal buying patterns, post holiday loading Backlist purchasing and series purchasing

popular Children’s print books remain very strong Men more likely to buy tablets, women more

likely to buy eReaders (Forrester Research (2011)

eBook trends

eBook trends that may change publishing?

Philip Ruppel, McGraw-HillMichael Hyatt, Thomas Nelson

Enhanced eBooks coming and will only get better

The device war is nearly over

The $9.99 model won’t last Publishers will remain

important despite self-publishing

“Contextual upsell” a business model to watch

Bundled books Social reading eBook clubs e-first publishing Free e-readers –

incentivisation Open access eBooks Monetization

experiments – in book advertising, sponsored links etc.

Digital Book World Conference predict eBooks will reach parity with print in 2014

Goldman Sachs est. 13% of all book sales will be eBook format by 2015, representing over £3 billion

Amazon share of eBook cake will fall by 50% over next 5 years as Google and Apple eat into market.

“By 2017 eBook will be the default format for textbooks, scholarly books and reference works”

Highwire Librarian survey (2009) – 50% of all acquisitions will be eBook by 2015

A mere 10% of new titles will be available in print alone by 2020 (BL)

Next few years ...

Kindle iPad app has increased eBook sales The app - huge impact on digital literature Google Books – “reading unbound”

mass digitization project British Library / Google project Apple iBooks Vertical Integration – Amazon opening a

publishing division, controlling all parts of the chain

eTextbooks yet to take off – delayed adoption Device convergence could shorten eReaders'

lifespan

Significant developments

“the next five years will see an explosion of the

eReader textbook market, and in 10 years, the market will be driven

by businesses going green in

government, education, health and other

sectors”

Forrester Research

Demand driversPrimary

• Online retailers

• Publishers• Vendors• The Market• Expectation• Technology

Secondary

• Cost• Convenience• Accessibility• Range• Changing

habits• Flexible

learning

Tertiary

• Students• Librarians• Faculty• Environmenta

l• Space

Age and gender important Undergrads and academic staff Appeals to digital consumers

who prefer bite size chunks of information (CIBER)

Men greater users, business students more likely to use

eBooks are not read sequentially “dipping” for ‘use’ (specific) more than ‘read’ (cover to cover)

Convenience factor Confusion about formats Log analysis shows power

browsing, quick usage Skimming is endemic

User behaviours in academic libraries

Constraints are diminishing

• Too few, high pricing, complex pricing models, Bundling solutions, licensing issues, DRM, Multiple formats and platforms, uncertain market, lack of key e-texts, poor discoverability

Usage is increasing (there is a but ...)

• Significant growth in eBook adoption, consumer market will exacerbate expectations in the academic library sector, importance of high quality metadata for discovery (JISC), MARC records drive usage (Springer), catalogued books are twice as likely to be used (UCL)

eBooks – academic libraries

“Kindles yet to woo university users”

“eBooks only an important research tool for 13% of 3,000 respondents”

“not knowing

how or where

to find big factor in lack

of usage”

‘2010 survey - students not warming to eBooks’

“students still

refer print when it

comes to using,

reading,

absorbing”

(Roy,2009)

“Why aren’t eBooks gaining

more ground in academic

libraries” (Slater, JWebLib, 2010)

“students .. unclear about structure

and functionality of eBooks”(Berget,

JAL, 2010)

“eTextbooks flunk early test” (2011)

‘students continue to prefer printed books to e-books’UCL 2011

Site licenses for texts

“Content unifying”

Self-publishing

Direct rental

The rise of the App

Patron Driven

Acquisition

Legislative change - enforced

Short loans

Course materials

fees

Print on demand

Netflix type

models

Renting print

textbooks

Some possibilities - where do we fit in?

- “the resource sharing that we have enjoyed in the world of analogue books is very much in question” (Roy, 2009)- “economics of eBooks are far from certain” (Numis City Brokers) - Preservation function of libraries threatened

- Collection development fragmentation- Willingness to embrace but frustration at exclusion from decisions (LJ, 2010) - Long-term impact and changes in reading habits (Soule, 2009) - Information literacy

- Consumer expectations effect academic libraries- Mass market benefitting more than the academic- Market has not yet settled down, there are new models emerging all the time- “eBook saga .. Long way to go with this” (Bradley, 2011)

“A university (or an IoT ...)is just a group of

buildings gathered around a library”

Shelby Foote

Thank you!Terry O’BrienDeputy Librarian, WIT.www.wit.ie/library #witlibrariestpobrien@wit.ie