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With Christmas just three months away, retailers are dusting off a venerable strategy: marketing the thing you didn't even know you wanted. For booksellers, this year's offering is e-books. While it's true that digital versions of the latest best-sellers can't be unwrapped under the Christmas tree, the sales pitch is that one of those $270 Rocket eBook readers would make a really neat gift.
There's a hitch, though: Even online booksellers worry that e-books won't capture holiday shoppers' imaginations. It's a fledgling market, and many consumers remain skeptical of the technology. "Longer term, it's got a lot of potential," says Lyn Blake, Amazon.com's general manager of books. "But today, there's not a whole lot to sell."
BarnesandNoble.com is jumping in anyway. It has added an e-books section to its Web site, invested $20 million in e-book publisher MightyWords, and partnered with the e-book technologists at iUniverse. For B&N, e-books might provide something very jolly indeed: a chance, for once, to jump ahead of Amazon, which has been slower to embrace e-books. But Amazon may be starting to move: It recently signed a deal with Microsoft, an e-book technology pioneer, and has been selling serialized chapters of Stephen King's second online book, The Plant. "Part of Barnes & Noble's strategy is defensive," says Forrester Research analyst Carrie Johnson, who adds: "They've always been behind Amazon.''
NEVER OUT OF PRINT. BarnesandNoble.com Vice-Chairman Steve Riggio says there's more to it than that, arguing that the possibilities of digitalization extend well beyond e-books. It paves the way, he says, for books printed on demand, works that are shorter than novel-length, and consumer access to out-of-print titles. "One of our roles is to develop the market," says Riggio. "In the World Wide Web, you're looking at an incredible wasteland of information. We're creating a site where readers can see so much that is of value -- they can view it, sample it."
For now, however, e-books are a tough sell. Although an Andersen Consulting report makes the probably optimistic prediction that they could represent a $2.3 billion market by 2005 -- 10% of all consumer books -- the fact remains that only about 50,000 e-book readers have been sold in their first two years on the market. Publishers would certainly benefit if the much-quoted report turns out to be on the money. With 30% of all books returned unsold, a shift to e-books could slash printing and distribution costs. But only recently has Simon & Schuster, an industry leader and King's usual publisher, announced that it will make its full range of new titles available in digital format this fall.
There also aren't a whole lot of people to sell to. The reading public seems to be quite happy with paper books, notes Carol Fitzgerald, founder and president of bookreporter.com, a Web site where readers exchange ideas about books. "This is not the Sony Walkman," says Fitzgerald. "We needed that to listen to the music we wanted to and be able to walk around. But books are pretty convenient." And even among avid readers, the target market for Gemstar's Rocket eBook, there doesn't seem to be much grassroots demand for the technology. "I spend eight hours a day minimum in front of a computer screen. I want a different experience when I sit back with a book," says reviewer Adam Mazmanian, About.com's books editor, who plows through about eight titles every month.
King struck fear in publishers when he released his first e-book, Riding the Bullet, and some 500,000 copies were downloaded -- a response that raised the specter of publishers and retailers being pushed out of the equation as authors sold direct to their fans. But as it turns out, a bookreporter.com survey found only 1 in 5 of those who downloaded King's book actually read it.
E-books may be the thing of the future. But this Christmas, someone curling up on the couch with their next great read is still much more likely to be turning pages made of old-fashioned paper.
By Nanette Byrnes in New York Edited by Thane Peterson
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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