Since most of the readers of this blog appear to be independent book sellers, you all have much more interaction with the book-buying public. Have any of you tried to ask them what kinds of content they’re looking for in e-format vs p-format? What kind of pricing they’re expecting? What types of sales models they would be willing to support/not support?

(fwiw, we’ve starting an informal bit of questioning with our student interns. Sany of them have expressed a preference for text books in an e-format (i.e. iPhone). )

– tom

We have a few frustrations at our bookstore regarding ereaders. We would like to sell them, but have been unable to find a source for them. Contacts with Sony and other distributors have not worked out. Anyone have any contacts out there? In a recent email with the ABA it sounded like they were renewing contact with Sony to work out a deal for distribution to ABA booksellers, but I haven’t heard any news on that.

As it is now, through ABA sites, ebooks receive a short discount for booksellers, and though costs are less for booksellers because there is no shipping and handling of books, this is not a good trend. If it becomes acceptable for publishers and distributors to offer short discounts on ebooks to keep the retail price down (and publishers are saying that the ebook format is not that much less expensive for them to produce than print books), it will threaten the ability of bookstores to stay in business, as the profit margin is already so slim. Because Amazon is offering ebooks for a cheap price, it will be hard for indie booksellers to be competitive (yet again.)

As far as the Symtio card; I really don’t think that is a good solution for keeping booksellers in the loop. Wouldn’t most people prefer direct download and not messing with, or having to keep track of, a card?

As a bookseller, I tend to forget that this is an international issue. I know many of our publishing colleagues get to go to Frankfurt and keep in touch with developments in Europe, but booksellers don’t get out as much.

Please feel free to translate my blog post and circulate among your colleagues. Hopefully, it will help spur discussion among the front line booksellers.

I hope the French government amend the Loi Lang to include ebooks. Not to do so would be to completely tilt the playing field.

As for Google, I’m not up to speed on their ebook sales plans. I’ve looked at their book search program and noted that it includes many newer, in copyright, books by arrangement with the publishers. As some pages within the books are not included, I think the utility of Google book search for reading a complete book is marginal, and the interface is not as easy on the eyes as Adobe Digital Editions or some of the other ereader platforms.

Perhaps somebody else can talk knowledgeably about Google’s ebook sales plans?

I hope you’ll report back on any interesting discussion or ideas in European publishing & bookselling. I encourage you to join twitter (http://twitter.com/home) if you have not already done so, as there is a very active community of booksellers and publishers talking about these issues there, and it’s opened up the “future of publishing” discussion tremendously.

Rich

I follow this conversation from France. I work at an “ABA like” organization called SLF for french independant booksellers, in Paris. We do have the same problems around here. I would love to make a small translation of the article (so interesting) for them, since we have on facebook a discussion group on those topics …(Livre 2.0). Would you mind ?

Here in France, we do have big discussions with the publishers (and the ministry of culture) about the price of the ebook since the “Loi Lang” (a law that puts the physical book at the same sell-price for each booksellers…) does not fit to the ebooks… The fear is the developpment of a discount process on that type of products by those who can afford losing money like Amazon…

One question, what about Google selling the ebooks directly to the customers ? What is your position about that ?

Have a nice day
Hélène