Amazon’s move to digital content makes perfect sense. The more it can focus on e-content, the more profitable it will be.
Electronic books, though, have a long way to go. What will probably be a bigger success in the near term is audiobooks. After announcing nearly two years ago that it would develop its own digital audiobooks store, Amazon said yesterday it would buy Audible.com, which has sold downloadable audiobooks for years.
It won’t be long before most people in the U.S. have an MP3 player built into their cellphone. Whether they’ll know it’s there is another matter.
What’s holding back e-books? The conventional wisdom is that the reading public isn’t quite ready for them. But maybe the problem is simply that not enough people read anymore.
At least one famous tech guru has declared the Kindle “dead on arrival” — none other than Apple’s Steve Jobs.
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
Hey, what about the other 60 percent of us, Steve?
What’s next? The New York Times’ Bits column envisions a service allowing readers to seamlessly switch from a print book on an e-reader to listening to the same book while you’re driving to work, then switching back to reading.
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Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors
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6 Comments
Sounds good to me. What I would like to see in your blog or book, is some coverage of how to get a book converted to audio. For some reason, that seems a difficult thing to find googling or otherwise. One I did find wanted an outrageous amount upfront to convert and then would offer me, the author, a small percentage of the resulting retail price–similar to what a major publisher would offer on a regular book contract. That makes no sense for the "aiming at Amazon"/POD crowd.
Steve,
I think book reading may be a lot like beer drinking. 5% of beer drinkers drink 80% of the beer.
That makes a mighty nice market for Budweiser.
As for me, I read 100+ books/year. There must be a lot of people like me or Amazon.com would be shrinking, not growing.
Newt
Steve Jobs may be brilliant in some areas, but he's dead wrong on his reading stats (not a credible stat, and too glib, anyway). We conducted a survey sampling of 10,800 Americans, August 07, (Persona Corp study) which indicates 83% can't live without books (and read at least 6 books per year), second only to daily internet surfing at 87%. I say: go Kindle, go, even though the design is flawed (I prefer the design (but not price) of the Iliad.) Steve Jobs keeps resisting the idea of Ebooks on his breakthrough devices, which is short-sighted. Books are actually growing in popularity, contrary to the unsupported musings of tech gurus. A publishers view. Derek Armstrong, publisher Kunati Books (http://www.kunati.com)
Steve, I've read your book, loved it, gave it a rave review, and have been watching your sales–always great. Can you help out a fellow author/publisher with some more good advice?
I want to get my book available through kindle, but I find myself dead in the water when I try to find out how. Even Amazon isn't being very helpful concerning a simple process to convert. My book is printed and distributed through LSI and Ingram–no help there.
Anything…?
Jocelyn Andersen
Steve, I've read your book, loved it, gave it a rave review, and have been watching your sales–always great. Can you help out a fellow author/publisher with some more good advice?
I want to get my book available through kindle, but I find myself dead in the water when I try to find out how. Even Amazon isn't being very helpful concerning a simple process to convert. My book is printed and distributed through LSI and Ingram–no help there.
Anything…?
Jocelyn Andersen
Thanks for your help Steve. My book is finally on Kindle! I really appreciate you taking the time to email me back.~~jocelyn andersen