| Take the online courseiPadulation
By insidebooks | February 2, 2010
The launch of the tablet computer from Apple last week was a masterful demonstration of how to launch a product, with little advance information and great anticipation in the media.
The iPad has not changed the industry overnight but it does look like the cool object we have been waiting for in terms of ebook readers. The colour screen will move ebooks to the next level, and whilst there are undoubtedly flaws in the first version, Apple is used to fine tuning products once they have reached the early adopter market.
For publishers the iPad offers more choice – a new player with which to do deals alongside Sony, Google and Amazon. There are predictions circulating in the industry about 50 per cent of books being sold as ebooks within the next five years, and the interest from Apple certainly confirms the impetus behind such a trend.
The irony is that Steve Jobs had proclaimed the book as dead …
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Close of play in the book market for 2009
By insidebooks | January 13, 2010
For 2009 Nielsen BookScan, which tracks nearly all retail book sales, reported consumer sales in the UK market of £1.751bn and 235.7m books. This is an average selling price (not cover price) of £7.43 per copy. The figures show a small fall from the previous year of 0.5 per cent (by volume) and 1.2 per cent (by value). This represents a broadly flat market and the decline does not come anything near the precipitous fall in sales of some other industries, for example car manufacturing. The average selling price fell by 6p and is at its lowest since 2001.
Around 3 per cent of the total sales by volume belong to two authors, Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown. Between them they sold 7 million books and their books make up five out of the top 10 bestselling titles. The other titles were by Marian Keyes, Stieg Larsson, Kate Atkinson, and Jodi Picoult, alongside the Guinness World Records 2010.
You can hear an LBF podcast about book sales last year - Jonathan Nowell from Nielsen Book being interviewed - here. He says that sales were lower partly as a result of fewer people going abroad on holiday, and therefore not buying so many holiday reads. He also predicts fewer celebrity biographies in the future; and more experimentation coming from smaller, independent publishers. In international comparisons, the UK sells more books per head of population (4 per capita) than other countries covered by Nielsen - e.g. 3 in Australia and 2.5 in the USA.
In Inside Book Publishing we write about trade or consumer publishing …
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Snow Books
By insidebooks | January 8, 2010
The icy spell of weather this January prompts thought about suitable reading. There is The Ice Storm by Rick Moody or Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg. How about Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose? More punning are Naomi Klein’s No Logo, the film tie-in editions of High School Musical, and That’s How I See Things by Sirish Rao and Bhajju Shyam.
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An effective habit
By insidebooks | December 15, 2009
Significant news about ebooks comes from the US. The bestselling author Stephen Covey is signing digital deals with Amazon for two of his books, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Principle-Centered Leadership. In return Stephen Covey will receive a royalty of 50 per cent, much higher than the usual royalties on ebooks (around 25 per cent for leading authors) and significantly higher than royalties on print editions. Amazon will have exclusive rights to sell the ebooks, and the deal is being done through the electronic publisher RosettaBooks. Could this encourage other bestselling authors to reserve the ebook rights in their books and do similar deals, even license directly to Amazon?
You can read more here in this New York Times article.
Further to the post ebookishness, news also comes that the Kindle will be available as an app for the iPhone. You can read about it here in this Telegraph article. ‘Kindle is finally available for the iPhone. If you don’t want to spend £150 or so on a Kindle reader, you can have it on your phone instead.’
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Trailblazing dog
By insidebooks | November 30, 2009
For those interested in the history of journals publishing, a fascinating archive has just gone up online. The Royal Society showcases 60 articles selected from an archive of more than 60,000 published by the Royal Society between 1665 and 2010. These include an article by Robert Hooke from 1667 - his account of an experiment in which a dog was kept alive by blowing through its lungs with a pair of bellows; and from 1891 Francis Galton’s proof that fingerprints are unique.
Visit the Trailblazing archive here.
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