Where Are Ebook Sales in Australia?

Statistics are flying around the net at the moment, quoting large publishers such as Hachette and Random House as saying ebook sales are up to 22%. Of what? Or do they mean by? A Google search revealed nothing. But I suspect these kinds of figures are going to be flung around for the forseeable future until things settle down, and goodness knows when that will be. Every second day I seem to get an email from Barnes & Noble that wants me to buy the new colour Nook. Not much point really, as a lot of the books I might want are not published in Australia, and copyright laws prevent me from downloading them from US sites as an ebook.

Where does this kind of restriction leave us in Australia? Even if you have a Kindle, you still can't download Kindle books that don't comply with the copyright laws. It hardly matters if you want the latest bestsellers, but if you don't, it's easy to find yourself with nothing to buy. Back to "real" books then. I wonder how Australia is going to fare over the next 2-3 years. People are jumping onto ebooks with great speed, there's no doubt about that, wherever you get your statistics. And it's also hardly surprising that ebooks are taking over from hardbacks (traditionally how most books in the US get published first).

We don't do many hardbacks here. So our competition is between trade paperbacks (currently selling at $32-39 each) and ebooks, with ebooks still behind, I'd say. Although the iPad2 might change that. So what is happening here? You can get an "Australian" Kindle, you can buy an iPad2 or 1, there are various cheap ereaders around (that are pretty hopeless). But where do we get our ebooks? Do we download the software from Readings site and go with their platform? I would bet if you asked people what DRM is, hardly anyone would know (it's a formatting thing that supposedly is to stop you "stealing" ebooks).

At least if you want to self-publish an ebook, it's easy to do. Either on your own or through sites such as Smashwords or Bookbaby. It's the thing to do right now, especially if you think you can generate enough publicity and word-of-mouth to sell several thousand copies. Industry pundits are saying that the rush of self-published ebooks will fade as readers sort out the good from the truly awful. I'm not so sure - a visit to any large bookshop will soon show you how many books are being published the traditional way. How do we find these?

My feeling is that Australia is still way behind on ebooks, and not catching up. I looked up Cate Kennedy's new poetry book today - The Taste of River Water. It's available as a book for $24.95 from both Scribe and the Readings site, but also available as an ebook from Readings (but not Scribe) for $14.99. In fact, most Readings ebooks are around $15. But when I went and looked them up on various publishers' sites, many of the same books are only listed as paperbacks. Or, in the case of Random House Australia, their ebooks are listed as being available from Amazon.

It's all very messy really, and it'll be interesting to see if and how things change over the next year or two. Because if there's one thing you can guarantee, this is an area of huge change at the moment - the question is - change to what? And what will it mean to both readers and authors?

Eeek! Ebooks and Downloads!

The book news this year has been all about e-books. Ebooks. E books. Well, maybe the consensus has come down on the side of ebooks. Who knows? BEA used e-books (and there has just been a conference called DigitalBook2010). The sellers are using eBooks (I guess to line up "capitally" with iPad and iPhone). Borders are now advertising their Kobo eBook reader. Maybe the sellers (as usual) will determine what we call these things. For now, they're all crowding into the market and the reviewers are scrambling to assess which one is best, or which one might do everything you want it to do. No one has yet advertised one that will vacuum my lounge room while I read, so I'm holding off for a while.

But while I was typing this, an email popped up, as they are wont to do. This one was from Optus (an ISP and mobile phone provider here in Australia), who wanted me to sign up for their new plan for the iPad. $50 Pre-Paid gets you UNLIMITED^~ data. Notice the funny little symbol next to the word "unlimited". I clicked on their handy little Buy Now button and in the fine print was told this:
Unlimited data voucher:Any data or credit on your service must will be used before unlimited data can be accessed. No rollover on Unlimited data expires after 30 days.
What on earth does that mean? Do I get free unlimited data download or don't I? What do I have to pay to get it? And isn't that a weird way to look at it?

My interpretation is that I pay X dollars, and I have to use what they give me first (3GB) and then after that everything is free - but only for 30 days. Then what? And this is the huge issue that is quickly emerging here in Australia. Maybe not overseas where mobile/cell phone costs are different and based on different modes and plans, but here the companies are falling over each other, trying to offer seemingly amazing deals, which nobody can understand when it comes to the "fine print". It's not just me. Quite a few reviewers are commenting on this as well.

This was all brought home to me this week when a friend told me about her latest phone bill. She has an iPhone, and has probably a dozen apps on it. She leaves it turned on all the time for incoming calls, but her latest bill shows that every night, the phone has been connecting to the internet without her knowledge and downloading updates for the various apps she has. For half an hour at a time, not just 5 or 10 seconds. She said she had set the phone not to do this, but it is still doing it.

I said to her that my impression was that that was where the big money was going to be. Not in the phones themselves, but the apps. "They're cheap," she said. "A couple of dollars each." But there are now 255,000 apps available, and quite a few of them are between $5 and $15. Not cheap. And not when they are using your download time to update themselves. So where does that leave ebooks?

A lot of people have a problem with the ebook being "unshareable". I don't lend many of my books, but I do have a sharing system with some of my friends. And when I lend to someone and they love the book, they buy one of their own. But so far, many ebook readers don't allow "sharing" (although this does seem to be changing a little). I was horrified when Amazon was actually able to "take back" books that buyers had downloaded. Connecting to Amazon for a new download apparently gave them access to what was on your Kindle and they decided to take some titles back! I'd like to see them do that with the custard pie I ate today.

Compared with 12 months ago, ebooks have leapt into our world with a resounding thump. All those in publishing who were saying true taking up of ebooks was 2-3 years away yet have been proven waaaaay wrong. Now publishers and suppliers (like Apple and Amazon etc) are battling over price structures and who gets a cut of what. As an author, I can see a lot of feathers flying out there in the arena at the moment, and am cautiously checking my contracts to see what I agreed to in terms of ebooks (up till now it's usually been phrased quaintly as "electronic publishing" or something similar). Any contract that says ebook rights will be negotiated separately in the future gives me hope.

What is happening now is both exciting and scary. I'm not buying an ebook reader until the dust settles a bit. I still remember someone years ago who had a Beta video player!! And I want to play with them first. I want to see what each one does, and whether they do what I want in terms of reading needs. I already know an ebook reader would save me several kilos of luggage weight when I go away. But I want more. Anyone for a version that vacuums?
And what do you think about ebook readers? Do you have one? Are you going to buy one? Do tell...