START AN EBOOK BUSINESS

Start an ebook business today! You'll have seen the adverts, but can you really start an ebook business overnight, and should you market your precious manuscript in this form?

First some definitions, to separate ebooks from print-on-demand publishing, with which they're often confused. E-books are electronic books read at the computer screen or in hand-held devices. Authors employ specialized software to produce what are really computer files, which they market and sell from their own websites, or through other outlets.

Worth adopting this route? Take a hard look at the promise and reality of ebook publishing.

Ebooks and Publishing

Once text could be put in digital form, and dissemination made easy by the Internet, e-publishing became an exciting prospect. Word processing programs appeared in the middle 1980s, and few offices were without them by 1990. Launched commercially in 1993, the Internet had linked a million machines a year later and has now penetrated 50% of American homes and businesses. Hardware and software continue to improve. The 1998 RocketeBook and the Softbook readers were bought by Gemstar in 2001, who re-engineered them as REB 1100 and REB 1200 machines {1}. Some of today's e-book readers will play music as well, and models under development will be more versatile and comfortable to use.

Everyone agrees that e-publishing is here to stay, and will revolutionize the industry. {2} Dozens of e-publishers already exist, and many of the larger booksellers already have an e-book department — Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Random House, etc. One small e-reader can relieve students of their heavy burden of textbooks, and vast areas of the developing world will gain access to information and educational opportunities that were unthinkable before.

But how much e-publishing is profitable now? Publishers are cagey about figures: they emphasize the future, that they're in for the long haul. Heartening stories go the rounds, particularly Stephen King's Riding the Bullet, an e-book novella that earned him $450,000 in 3 days (though excess bandwidth charges took back $110,000). {3} Nonetheless, bestseller sales in e-books are typically 1,000 - 7,000 per year, {4} which is small by traditional publishing standards. Too many sites proclaim, "You too can have a profitable e-publishing business — just buy our e-book to learn how."

Ebooks tend to be extremely cheap (look at offerings on eBay), and need high sales volumes to be worth writing.

In short, e-publishing is not easy money yet, and perhaps never will be. Market research is essential, to see not what people should pay, but what they really will pay for. The publishing trade still does this badly, lacking the interactivity that the Internet can bring.

As for e-book standards, common sense and the history of technology suggest backing the companies with good track records and marketing muscle, i.e. Adobe (Acrobat) and Microsoft (Microsoft eReader).

Continuing Problems

If the advantages of e-publishing are obvious — lower production costs, smaller print-runs, shorter times to market, greater power and profits to authors and adventurous publishers — why hasn't the industry surged ahead? Probably because of:

hardware costs. Most e-book readers are still too expensive, nothing like the $50 to $100 that buys a CD player. {5}

proliferating platforms. Acrobat, Microsoft e-book, Gemstar, PalmOS, etc.— which platform should authors write for and readers stock their library with? Hardware and software can be discontinued without warning, and no one wishes to buy into obsolescence. {6}

limited range of titles. Lists are steadily increasing, but only a small fraction of print books are also available as e-books.

quality filters are unclear. Traditional publishing builds on specialist skills — MS selection, editing, proofing, typesetting, illustration, warehousing, marketing, reviewing — each adding a quality filter to the final product. Buyers of e-books do not have these reassurances. {7}

preference for printed books. Despite advantages of backlit pages, graphics and multimedia, electronic readers are not yet as comfortable as the traditional paper book.

fragmented nature of publishing business. The USA has over 50,000 publishers. {8} Add publishers in Canada, UK and Australia and the total in the English-speaking world may exceed 100,000. Not all are profitable. Many publishers are small, local and specialized. Publishing, accounting, warehousing and marketing procedures vary widely, as does the software employed. Hence a broadly-satisfied reading public, but also great waste and difficulties in implementing common IT standards. {9}

e-books are easy to copy, and booksellers do not want to be plagued with returns. (Even traditional books are distributed with hefty discounts (55% at Amazon) on a sale or return basis, which places POD books at a disadvantage, as these are generally not returnable. {10})

2005 was being suggested as the time when these problems would be overcome, and e-publishing really take off, {11} but the public is still waiting for a cheap and convenient ebook reader. All that said, some authors do report good ebook sales. {12}

References

1. p. 258 in Richard Curtis and William Thomas Quick. How to Get Your Ebook Published. 2002. Writer's Digest Books. Ohio.

2. Who Came First? by K.S. Weisner. August 2001.

3. p.110 in Curtis and Quick. op.cit.

4. State of the e-book world. January 2002.

5. p.23 in Curtis and Quick. op.cit.

6. p. 258 in Curtis and Quick. op. cit.

7. p. 71 in Curtis and Quick. Op. cit.

8. Bizmark.Net. Several close analyses of the US publishing scene.

9. Learning to e-read in E-trends.: Making sense of the electronic communications revolution. 2001. Profile Books Ltd. London.

10. Bizmark.Net. Op. cit.

11. Re: ebook Industry by G. Sanders. February 2001.

12. Ebook publishing versus print publishing by Linda Pendleton. 2004.