Here is Orion CEO Peter Roche's measured opinion on the ebook debate from The Bookseller. I reckon he has it spot on. While ebooks are something to be abreast of, they shouldn't take publishers' eyes from the core market they already have, human readers.
I saw this happen with the move from cassettes to CDs where publishers effectively decided to stop issuing audiobooks on cassettes and only produce them on CD. By focusing on what was more cost effective for themselves, publishers lost a large slice of the market who were used to cassettes and had not gotten to grips with CDs or upgraded their radio cassettes to CD players. They didn't go elsewhere, they just disappeared into a black hole.
The result was that because CD audiobooks didn't sell as well as cassette versions, then bookshops stopped stocking them and it was deemed that this was a product that the public didn't want. It also put cassette producing companies out of business.
There are still people out there who still have cassette players and would like to be able to buy audiobooks on tape. But publishers effectively turned their back on them in the quest for new technology. It would be interesting for some of the big publishers of audiobooks (such as HarperCollins) to compare sales of them say 10 years ago compared with today. And then think about why (given that we are so technologically aware).
Those people who bought audiobooks 10 years ago were probably quite happy to pay the full price. Publishers should focus on improving their revenue streams from loyal customers that they already have rather than distract themselves with potential e-revenue from an unknown e-market. After all, that is what all the books on business bang on about.
1 comment:
Not sure I see where you're going with this. The late adopters, as always, were forced to give in; they've now long since bought CD players -- how many homes don't have one of those, unless because they've moved on to mp3-based things? As far as I know you can still get blank cassettes and CD players combined with cassette recorders, enabling a CD to be copied to cassette and played in an old car stereo, or whatever. And given the extreme cheapness of modern gadgetry, these extreme late adopters are never going to add up to a row of beans in the market.
As far as I know business people don't abandon a market that's still profitable. Tapes cost a lot more to make and are (let's face it) just not nearly as good as CDs. Naturally they were going to lose out to CDs, which have vastly better sound quality and offer random access to tracks.
And strangely you don't mention the influence of the internet over the last 10 years: that must have reduced sales of audio books just as much as of normal ones. Basically there's so much free stuff washing around these days that it's never going to be the same again for those of trying to sell such stuff in hard copy.
Now, if you'd queried why a cassette costing no more than £8 in the late 1980s was replaced by a CD (which costs almost nothing to manufacture) that mysteriously cost £15... I suppose we should all feel a bit sorry for the music recording industry but it's hard to avoid the feeling they've brough it on themselves to some extent.
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