eReader Zone

For anyone interested, this is from the Wall Street Journal on Monday, 13 July.********Publisher Delays E-Book Amid Debate on Pricing By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Geoffrey A. Fowler A leading independent publisher is saying no to the e-book format for one of its big September titles, the latest pushback in the fight over electronic-book pricing. Publishers are concerned that so many successful new titles are sold for $9.99 or less on Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle electronic book reader and Fictionwise, an e-book retailer owned by Barnes & Noble Inc. In contrast, new hardcover novels typically retail for $25 to $27. Like most publishers, Sourcebooks Inc., an independent publisher based in Naperville, Ill., usually makes new books available as e-books upon print publication, but not this time. In an interview, Sourcebooks’ chief executive said it will delay by at least half a year the e-book version of "Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse," a young-readers title in the vein of Harry Potter that goes on sale Sept. 9. While the book is a debut novel, the author, Kaleb Nation, has a following with his Twilightguy.com blog. sourcebooks.com ‘Bran Hambric’ goes on sale Sept. 9 but won’t be an e-book until spring. Sourcebooks is issuing 75,000 copies of "Bran Hambric," a sizable print run in this economy, and has arranged a substantial marketing campaign and book tour for Mr. Nation. "It doesn’t make sense for a new book to be valued at $9.99," said Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks, which issues 250 to 300 new titles annually. "The argument is that the cheaper the book is, the more people will buy it. But hardcover books have an audience, and we shouldn’t cannibalize it." An e-book for "Bran Hambric" will become available in the spring, she said. Richard Curtis, Mr. Nation’s agent, concurs on holding back the e-book edition. "We don’t want to undercut the sales and royalty potential of the printed hardcover," Mr. Curtis said. A spokesman for Amazon said Kindle customers "expect new releases to be available on the Kindle," declining to comment further. The battle will grow even more complex later this year, when Google Inc. begins selling e-books. Google will allow publishers to set their own prices, although it will reserve the right to discount titles at its own expense. Of the top 15 fiction books on the July 19 New York Times best-seller list, only Catherine Coulter’s novel "Knockout," which ranks No. 4, is unavailable in the Kindle format. Robert Gottlieb, chairman of Trident Media Group LLC and Ms. Coulter’s literary agent, said he doesn’t allow any of his authors’ books to be published simultaneously as an e-book when he can prevent it. "It’s no different than releasing a DVD on the same day that a new movie is released in the movie theaters," he said. "Why would you do that?" Music labels went through a similar pricing fight with Apple Inc., which for years set the price of all the digital music in its iTunes store at 99 cents. In April, Apple expanded to a tiered pricing system, offering songs for 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. "Publishers are in denial about the economics of digital content," said Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. "What we’ve seen in other industries and in the evolution of digital content is that consumers are not willing to pay as much for content that is separated from its physical medium." Amazon is squeezed between consumers who expect lower prices for digital content and publishers determined to protect their revenue streams, she said. Steve Haber, president of Sony Corp.’s digital reading business, says it is logical to expect that digital books should cost less, because of the lower production costs, such as for paper. "There should be significant savings" for consumers, he said. In recent months, however, publishers have been increasingly setting the list prices for their digital books at the same level as the e-books’ traditional counterparts, he said. Retailers, though, generally pay publishers half of a hardcover book’s list price. So if a hardcover lists for $25, the e-book retailer is probably paying $12.50 for a product it might sell for less than $12. Sony declined to say whether it makes money on e-books overall, but says it sells only some at a loss, peddling many at much higher prices. Some publishers have already embraced alternative means of selling e-books that give them more control over price. Last month, CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster publishing arm began setting its own prices on nearly 5,000 e-books sold by Scribd Inc., a Web site that allows people to post and read documents online. Although e-books account for only 1% to 2% of total book sales, as measured by dollars, they are one of publishing’s few bright areas. Ms. Epps, the Forrester analyst, estimates that by year end there will be more than three million dedicated e-reader devices in the U.S., with two million sold in 2009.

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