E-book readers, and the e-books to read on them, are a very recent phenomenon. All the same, they seem to have been adopted very rapidly by the public. Much of the credit for that must surely be given to the Amazon Kindle reader – in particular the Kindle 2.0 which hit 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. However, it was the Kindle 2.0 that helped e-books to really take off.

Equally important was the large selection of Kindle books available. Amazon has always had a lot more titles on offer than the chasing pack. 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 out of copyright titles which can be downloaded free of charge.

However, whilst the public may have adapted to e-books very quickly, it remains to be seen if the main publishing companies have got their corporate heads around the concept yet. The traditional publishing cycle has been totally modified by the introduction of e-books. E-books are not only cheaper than traditional printed books – there’s no reason why they wouldn’t be released alongside the conventional printed hardback version. No need to wait months for the paperback, the e-book version is available from day one.

It seems obvious that hardback sales could be impacted by the fact that a cheaper version is available simultaneously with the hardback edition. According to Amazon, they are currently selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks. This seems to have given many of the big publishers cause for concern. They have already had several run ins with Amazon over the pricing of e-books.

Publishers like Penguin, Hachette and Harper Collins recently switched 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 led to an increase in the price of some e-books – to the point where they are more expensive than the hardback edition in some cases.

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 already come down.

The protectionist tactics of the publishers seems to be short sighted at best, and possibly verging on antagonistic. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suppose 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 owners are the target market for the major publishing houses.

It also seems apparent that e-books should sell for less than standard printed books. Apart from their lack of paper, ink and bindings, they have no delivery fee to speak of. They are also – even making allowances for the materials used in the e-book readers themselves – more environmentally friendly. 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. There are savings to be had by all – publisher’s costs will also be reduced and customers will expect prices to reflect this fact. If publishers can modify their business model to accommodate e-books, then they will continue to enjoy success. On the other hand, if their desire for short term profits inures them to the possible opportunities offered by this new medium, they will be rejected by both their authors and their readers.

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