E-book readers, and the e-books to read on them, are a very recent phenomenon. However, the book buying public seems to have grown accustomed to e-books very quickly. A good deal of the credit for that must surely go to the Amazon Kindle reader – in particular the Kindle 2.0 which first appeared on the market in February of 2009. Amazon’s upgraded third generation Kindle was unveiled in August of 2010 and, despite doom laden predictions for the Kindle following the launch of Apple’s iPad, is selling more quickly than ever. There’s little doubt that it was the Kindle 2.0 that really raised the public profile of e-books.

Another key factor was the large number of Kindle books available. Amazon has always been well in front of the following pack when it comes to the number of titles available. Today they have over 750,000 Kindle books available on their Kindle store – and that’s just the paid titles. There are over 1.8 million books which are now out of copyright and con be downloaded for free direct from Amazon’s Kindle store.

However, whilst the public may have taken to e-books, the same cannot necessarily be said for the major publishing houses. E-books have completely revised the long established publishing cycle. Not only are e-books cheaper than printed books – due to the fact that they require no paper, ink or bindings – but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be made available at the same time as the hardback. No need to wait months for the paperback, the e-book version is available from day one.

Obviously, having a cheaper version available at the same time as the hardback is something which could impact upon the sales of hardback books. According to Amazon, they are currently selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks. This seems to have created a bit of a stir for many of the big publishing houses. They have already had several run ins with Amazon over the pricing of e-books.

Publishers like Harper Collins, Penguin and Hachette recently moved to the “agency model” for their e-books. In layman’s terms, the price is set by the publisher as opposed to the retailer (Amazon). This has seen e-book prices rise – in some cases to the point where they cost more than the hardback version.

Kindle owners quickly retaliated by awarding “one star” reviews to books where they felt that the Kindle book price was too high. Some fairly critical comments were left on the Amazon website – aimed at the publishers by and large – and it was suggested that potential customers boycott both the Kindle and the hardback versions until prices are set at more reasonable levels. Some prices have now been reduced.

The protectionist tactics of the publishers seems to be short sighted at best, and possibly verging on antagonistic. After all, it seems reasonable to assume that e-book readers owners read a good number of books. If you only read a book a month then you would hardly invest in an e-book reader would you? In other words, e-book reader users are the major publisher’s target audience.

It also seems apparent that e-books should sell for less than standard printed books. In addition to the lack of paper, ink and bindings, they have virtually no delivery fees associated with them. They are also more environmentally friendly – even allowing for the materials used in the e-book readers themselves. It seems likely that the owners of e-book readers could work this out and that they would, quite reasonably, expect prices to be set accordingly.

It could be that the publisher’s tactics will prove successful in the short term – however, they need to take care not to antagonise some of their best customers. Unjustified price levels seem likely to annoy the buying public and, after a few one star reviews and public calls for buying boycotts, authors would presumably also be somewhat disenchanted. The e-book revolution has just as much to offer publishers as it does the public. Publishers will also have reduced expenses when producing and selling e-book versions – and customers will expect the selling price of e-books to reflect these lower costs. If publishers can adapt to e-books, in the same way that readers have, they may continue to thrive. On the other hand, if their greed for short term profits blinds them to the possible opportunities afforded by this new medium, they will be rejected by both their readers and their authors.

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