The blogosphere has been buzzing since the App Store launched over last weekend with comments about ‘dozy publishers’ who have missed a great opportunity to make their books available on the iPhone. But apart from a few digital PR points scored against competing publishers, there doesn’t seem to me to be any huge value in first mover advantage here for publishers, unless we want to make the decision to become software developers.
The perception is that the App Store has ‘opened up’ the iPhone to publishers and to e-reading. The reality is that the iPhone has always been enabled for e-reading: you could read a PDF on the iPhone when it launched; you could preview books via online widgets in a browser; you could utilise the ‘TextonPhone’ application. So, whilst we have been awaiting the launch of the App Store with interest, we didn’t see enormous advantage in, for example, creating a reading app ourselves or Being There on Day One, just for the sake of it. Will it really have been a huge mistake if we wait six months to see how things develop and then start to make our books available on the iPhone? I don’t think so, actually. For us it was always a watching brief, to see what came out of it and then to see how things shook out.
What will emerge as the most popular reading app? Will a viable iPhone platform for sale of commercial ebooks be developed?
Interestingly the price of apps is already plummeting as free apps get more highly and more frequently rated and the paid-for apps drop down the ratings. Perhaps this suggests even more strongly that the App is not The Thing; it is merely a container or a channel for the content, which will still be The Thing. Many of the apps are great if you want to download a tonne of free Project Gutenberg ebooks and so on, but few seem to be offering paid-for titles and those which do often offer just one author’s titles or even just one title. Which ones have developed the best commercial model, or whether there is an obvious platform winner, is still unclear. And surely the existing situation in which tonnes of different books are available as individual apps will only make clarity of choice and availability a nightmare for the consumer?
I don’t agree with Kassia Krozer at Booksquare that DRM is the main issue (though it certainly still minimises massively the number of ebooks we could make available immediately on the iPhone as most authors / agents still insist upon it).
I think many publishers have decided, as Adam Hodgkin argues today, to ‘wait and see’. Now is definitely a time for experimentation (and watch this space, as experiment we will). But I don’t think any boats have been missed, here. What will really move things on is not tonnes of competing apps featuring individual authors or access to free stuff, but a cross-publisher platform for iPhone delivery, which enables clear consumer choice across a variety of titles.
And before you say it, I’m not sure Fictionwise is it unless they make their terms a *lot* more attractive for publishers.
7 Comments
Sara — Thanks for the disagreement! DRM isn’t *the* only issue, but it’s certainly one. I’m really interested in the discussion about authors and agents and rights because there is so much education to be shared (remind to tell you about a very sad audio/accessibility discussion I once had).
I did want to circle back to one thought you had because it mirrored our Friday night debate at BS HQ — the idea that publishers need to be software developers. In the most basic sense, what you sell is software. It’s weird to think of books in that way, but your mention of software development — and we were talking specifically about how important it is for publishers to get into the development game on some level rather than waiting for someone else to come up with the cool stuff — reminded me that publishing is all about software development.
Do I really think the industry needed a flashy toy to coincide with the launch of the new iPhone/software? Yeah, sort of. If not a toy then maybe a strong statement that we too are part of the entertainment industry. I’m pretty big on going where the consumers are, and right now they’re excited about the iPhone/Touch/mobile. It makes sense to me that capitalizing on this excitement — now — is a good idea.
Hi Kassia,
Unless they picked up the SDK in March and built and tested something, using their fully resourced software development department with full infrastructure, that integrates with their digital repository and ecom system in 3-4 months, most publisher simply aren’t in a position to capitalise on the launch excitement.
And I don’t think that matters. The iPhone market will keep growing and I think it is more important to enter this new market in a coherent, stable, usable and sustainable way, able to offer a full selection of your best content, glitch free. Furthermore, there is clearly a bit of turmoil with the App Store itself, in terms of pricing and categorisation, and I think it is better to let things settle down and then inject your content into a stable category that most consumers will recognise and therefore be able to quickly find your content within.
In addition, until Apple openly recognise that the iPhone is now an ereader too and begin to market that function through iTunes (i.e. as they have done for music/iPod and films/Apple TV), book content will be limited to a position one degree removed from the mainstream iTunes/iPod/iPhone experience.
So, in summary – nope, I don’t think publishers are/should be software development houses… yet… and nope, I don’t think the the iPhone launch was a real missed opportunity.
Thanks for your comment.
James
Well said, James. Kassia, consumers *are* excited by the iPhone, but not because they see it as a great e-reader! I think that perception might build over time but the shift is still going to be slow, it will take time for the best applications to rise to the top. Just as publishers have not become printers, neither are they likely – at least for some time – to become software developers.
Interesting points about publishers as software developers, no I don’t think they should be/are software developers – publishers should concentrate on what they do well, content.
But that’s not to say they shouldn’t work with software developers to ensure that software is developed with publishing models in mind – software can be a blank slate, better to have a bespoke application that addresses certain use cases unique to publishing.
Disclaimer: I worked in publishing for a number of years and now work in web/application development
I’m sure you’ve seen Lonely Planet’s announcement that they’ve made audiobooks (phrasebooks) available for the App store, including a free Mandarin one until the Olympics opens?
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/63332-lp-offers-phrasebooks-to-iphone-and-ipod-users.html
As a publisher that also has an API (irrespective of the fact that you can’t really do anything with it) I think LP wins some kind of prize for, you know, putting their money where our mouths are. (Or aren’t.)
Good debate all.
I think you’re right, in that there’s no big advantage to being the first app out there, but perhaps wrong in thinking that there’s time to wait. Perhaps you’ve seen my analysis on pubfrontier.org of the costs of iPhone ebooks versus, say, Sony Reader ebooks. And the payback to the author for self-publishing. I think there’s probably an advantage to the first couple of publishers who establish an iPhone “imprint”, and help their authors get their works out there as “first-class” Apps, instead of being hidden behind the publisher’s store/reader App.
Great discussion! There are valid points all around, and the “publishers are not software developers” concern will ultimately fall to how much interest the corporate parent has in becoming a media company versus a traditional book publisher (not a bad thing). I think there needs to be a cross-publisher app developed (downloading a separate app for each title is ludicrous). This could take several forms to gather revenue, from free first chapters (with extras like video, interviews, etc) with an option to buy for the rest, or a subscription-based service. The loss to the publisher, of course, is that we’re then paying for a middleman. Just as Hulu.com was a joint NBC and Fox venture which, after its success, began to host competitor’s content, an enterprising UK/US publisher can do the same here.
Disclosure: I work for Macmillan’s U.S. operations in Internet Marketing.
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