BPN 1412 Ereaders will drop under 150 euro

The year is almost over and looking back I am impressed by the inroads made by ereaders and electronic books. Of course Kindle had made impressive inroads already, but only in the US. And now the fight for market share has begun. Barnes & Noble launched the Nook. In neighbouring Canada a new entrant Kobo is starting up dotted with 16 million US by amongst others Borders. But in Europe, Amazon.com has not made any impression and still does not do so.

In Europe, it is Sony which started up the wave. In The Netherlands Sony and Bol.com teamed up successfully and made a dramatic start. The aim was to sell 10.000 units before the end of the year. And they did sell more than 10.000 units. In fact the Sony ereader was and still is the favourite item in the consumer electronic goods, leaving netbooks behind.

But the Sony/Bol.com combination triggered also other brands of ereaders such as Bebooks, Hanlin and Cybook to start selling. In fact the action by Sony/Bol.com set off an action among Dutch bookshops, where ereaders were met with a lot of expected scepticism. Yet when potential buyers showed up, the tradesman in the bookseller would loose all reservation.

The introduction of ereader in The Netherlands has had five effects on the Dutch ebook market:
a. The price of ereaders has been lowered under 300 euro and the Price will even drop under 200 euro in 2010.
b. The publishing format has been standardised on the EPUB format. It is now the official format and publishers and distributors using other formats offer now also EPUB.
c. EPUB carries DRM limitations, but a liberal regime is offered: a buyer can share the ebook with four friends or copy it onto four platforms.
d. Publishers are getting more eager to publish an electronic counterpart together with a printed edition.
e. In the Netherlands printed books have a fixed Price for cultural reasons. But for ebooks the price has dropped 10 percent on average. The price would have dropped more if the VAT had been lined up with the VAT of printed books, which is only 6 percent instead of 19 percent. (The Spanish government has announced plans to slash value-added tax on electronic books to the same low level as printed books, from 16 percent to 4 percent).


BTW The price of ereaders will drop even under 150 euro, I am convinced. Looking at the Nook of Barnes & Noble it is clear to me that this ereader with two screens of digital paper and LCD could have been cheaper by leaving the useless colour mini-screen out.

So ebook and the ereader will become a consumer item for the book reader next year, while the larger ereaders will start a fight for their share of newspaper market, on which Kindle and Irex DRS are already players with Hearst waiting in the wings.

Blog Posting Number 1412

Tags: ebook, ereader

BPN 1394 Kindle launched globally, did you notice?

Beginning of October a press statement was released by Amazon about the international launch of a global Kindle. The global Kindle would be a Kindle 2, it would be 20 US dollar cheaper than the price of the US Kindle at that time and AT&T would be the telecom carrier worldwide instead of Sprint Verizon. The e-books will be only in English/American and will be two US dollars more expensive; the two US dollar paying for the telecom charges. Next year a Kindle DX would be on offer. After that statement it stayed quiet in The Netherlands even on October 19, 2009, the day of the launch.

In the meantime Sony is very active in The Netherlands and even thinks to sell more than 10.000 e-readers before the end of the year. Sony has associated itself with the popular internet bookshop Bol.com in the starting market in The Netherlands. So fat the buyers of e-readers buy 4 books to each e-reader; in the US each e-reader contains 8 e-books. The market condition in The Netherlands is now ripe for the sales of e-readers. The publishers are finally embracing the e-book; it is even expected that every new title will have an electronic counterpart next year. The price of the hardware has come down to an acceptable level. There is a portfolio of 110.000 e-books, including Dutch language titles. And the popular internet bookshop has become the prime promoter of the e-reader. Also the physical bookshops have started to sell e-readers of various brands and e-books. The bookshop chain Selexyz started last year selling the iLiad of the Dutch manufacturer iRex Technologies. It looks like the iLiad had a preferential treatment for a period, but now Selexyz as well as other bookshops sells other less expensive brands like Sony, Cybook, Cool-ER and Bebook.

Will Kindle make it in The Netherlands? No. The portfolio contains only English/American titles and no Dutch language ones. AT&T is only a business telecom provider. Amazon.com uses the Mobipocket format, while in The Netherlands the publishers have chosen for the EPUB format (the Dutch even can lend an e-book to four friends or devices).

Will The Netherlands embrace e-readers in one or two years. No, not even in before 2015. I believe that by 2030 the e-reader might be a common device or perhaps it might even be overtaken by a new tablet like a multifunctional, colour screen device for cultural matters like music, movies, books, cartoons, newspapers as well as social media. Something like the iPhone but with a larger screen.

Blog Posting Number: 1394

Tags: e-book, e-reader

BPN 1365 D(utch)-day for e-books

In the past week Dutch bookstores could not keep the news under their hat about e-Books. Today the big news broke: the Dutch central book logistics operator opened a database with 2000 Dutch language e-Books and Bol.com together with Sony launched their cooperation to conquer the market. So far three benefits have come from it. Firstly, E-book is taken serious from now on. Secondly, Sony has forced EPUB to be the standard in the Netherlands. Thirdly, the fixed book price for printed book is not maintained with e-Books.

A professional launch of e-Books has taken fifteen years since the launch of the first Sony EB book in The Netherlands in 1994. The e-Book in a minidisk did not take off at that time. But now e-Book has a better chance. The e-Book readers give a better reading experience with digital paper. The price is falling dramatically and at last a serious e-Book portfolio with Dutch language literature is building up. Besides the infrastructure and competition for the distribution of e-Books is there now.

There has been a build-up towards taking e-Books and e-Readers seriously since 2006. In that year the Philips spin-off iRex Technologies presented the first reader with digital paper of E-Ink technology. One of the latest successes for the company was the co-operation with NRC-Handelsblad, the national quality newspaper of The Netherlands. But a real impact in The Netherlands, iRex has been unable to make due to the high pricing of the e-Reader iLiad and others. Other e-Reader manufacturers such as Cybook, Hanlin and lately Bebook, a Dutch developer, made use of the playing area left to them and offered e-Reader against lower prices.

Estimating the market ready for a launch, Sony prepared an offer together with the internet bookshop Bol.nl. Sony introduced two models of e-Readers against the price of respectively 199 euro and 299 euro; the models are not the latest ones launched in the USA today, but Sony PRS 300 and Sony Reader Touch Edition. At the same day the Dutch central book logistics operator Centraal Boekhuis launched a database with all Dutch language e-Books, said to 3.000 titles; also 200.000 English language e-Books will be distributed. Besides the sales by the internet bookshop Bol.com, also physical bookshops such as Selexyz.nl, Vanstockum.nl, Bruna.nl, Jongbloed.nl en Studon.nl will sell e-Books and e-Readers.

The impressive move of Sony has made impact on the Dutch publishers as far as the format. So far Mobipocket Reader and some private formats were used for e-Book distribution, but by changing from its proprietary format to the EPUB format and managing it in cooperation with Adobe, Sony has made a very wise move. Besides setting an industrial standard, Sony and Adobe set the mores of copying: the buyer is allowed to copy the book maximally four time to other platforms and for friends.

In The Netherlands there is a fixed book price for printed books with a 6 percent VAT. The e-Books will not have a fixed price. In fact today there were even various e-Book prices to be found. But sadly enough the VAT is not 6 but 19 percent.

On September 2, 2009 Sony will start delivering the e-Readers through Bol.com. Today 1505 Dutch language e-Books can be found at Bol.com

Blog Posting Number: 1365

Tags: ebook, ereader

Dutch public libraries in e-books

The Dutch service organisation for libraries NBD/Biblion will offer public libraries a collection of digital and audio books within two months. The members of the public library will be able to download e-books and audio books at home. The new online service is an addition to music download service for members of the public library, which was started late 2005.

The service organisation will produce a portal, which will be launched for trial in the second quarter of the year. There is a curious detail: normally e-books can be rented out to members instantaneously. However, in this case a limited number can rent the e-book copies due to license limitations. In first instance a few hundreds Dutch language e-books will be available, included copyright ones, as well as a few thousand English language books in the public domain.

In The Netherlands activities concerning e-books are fragmented. iRex Technologies is selling the iLiad. There is an online e-book site. The Dutch book chain Selexyz has started to sell the e-book reader Iliad and e-books (the company sold already more than 150 e-book readers). The software development company Edupaper has held a trial in a school environment and is now selling e-book readers like the Iliad, Booken Cybook, Polymer Vision Readius. And a few public libraries, among which the public library of my hometown Almere, bought e-book readers to rent them out. However, there is no united consumer promoting campaign for e-book readers and e-books by manufacturers, publishers, developers, book shops and libraries.

Blog Posting Number: 976

Tags: e-book,
e-book reader, public library, library