Kobo’s 30% offer – what can you buy?

I read quite a lot, especially eBooks, so my attention was grabbed by an email from Kobo, offering 30% off “select” books. That’s quite handy. But a look at the small print reveals this text:

“Discount code is valid for one time 30% off any eBook purchase excluding those from the following publishers: In the UK – Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, and Zondervan, and all respective subsidiary imprints.”

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s pretty much all the major publishers in the UK, isn’t it? Sure, there are some independent and smaller companies that aren’t covered by that. But I think it’s actually quite likely that the vast majority of books that many people might decide they want to buy are actually going to be excluded from the offer by that bit of small print.

And, of course, a lot of people won’t actually be certain who owns a particular publisher – they’ll just want the latest title by their favourite author.

I can’t help thinking that a fair number of people are going to be disappointed when they try to use the discount code. Wouldn’t it have been better to say “30% off some independent titles” or something like that?

HarperCollins statement on library eBooks

I wrote earlier this week about new proposals from HarperCollins which would mean that library copies of eBooks expire after 26 loans. Today I’ve done a short news piece for RegisterHardware.

Since it was only a brief item, and there wasn’t space to include the HarperCollins UK statement in its entirety, I’m reproducing it below:

HarperCollins has always been a firm supporter of libraries in the UK, working hard to ensure that our books are available in both physical and digital form. We also work closely with The Reading Agency and include libraries as a regular element of all author tours. With a rapidly changing digital market, establishing the right arrangement for lending e-books, which supports the interests of both readers and authors while providing a sustainable future, is not straightforward and many models may need to be tested before we reach the optimum outcome. The deal which HarperCollins US have struck involving a cap of 26 consecutive circulations on a “one copy, one reader” basis, is one potential solution, and preferable, we believe, to simply prohibiting ebook library lending as some publishers in both the UK and the US have done. We continue to work with the PA on this issue, with the aim of reaching an industry-wide solution.

Update: I’ve asked HC to clarify whether or not – as OverDrive told me – the 26 loan limit will apply in the UK, as their statement isn’t 100% clear on that. I’ll update when I hear more from them.

You can’t borrow that eBook – it’s worn out!

Back in November, I wrote about why, if some publishers have their way, you may have to visit a library in person to borrow an eBook. You may perhaps have thought that the lunacy of traditional publishing when faced with new technology had excelled itself there, but think again.

A new policy from HarperCollins – not exactly a small player in the publishing world – means that libraries will have to replace eBooks regularly, as they’ll be worn out.

A year is the life of an eBook

In more detail, the new policy – reported in the Library Journal – is that new Harper Collins eBooks sold to libraries will have a licence (enforced by the Digital Rights system embedded in the files) that allows a book to be loaned only twenty-six times, before it expires.

After that, if the library wants to carry on lending the book, it will have to buy a new copy. At first glance, you might think “Well, so what? Don’t paper books wear out too?” Well, yes, they do – but if you visit any library, you’ll very likely find plenty of books that have date stamps showing they’ve been circulating for years, especially good quality hardbacks (and let’s not forget that the pricing policies of eBooks often means that they cost similar amounts to hardbacks).

Where does that figure of a year come from? Well, when you borrow a digital book from a library, typically the loan period is two weeks, and just like with real books, a library can only lend to one person at a time. If it’s a popular book that other people are waiting for – just like real ones, you can reserve them too – then that means that, potentially, those twenty six loans will be used up in just one year.

Of course, given the relatively small numbers of people borrowing from libraries now, it may well take a bit longer than that – but I think it would be naïve to imagine that as eBook borrowing becomes more popular, the publishers will make their policies more lenient. Certainly, the history of the eBook business so far would seem to suggest the opposite.

Does this affect the UK?

Despite the story first appearing in Library Journal, this isn’t a policy that’s just restricted to the USA. According to OverDrive, who run the digital systems used by many libraries, including quite a few local authorities in the UK that allow eBook lending:

This new policy affects all HarperCollins eBooks in libraries worldwide, and applies to all distributor/vendors (including OverDrive)

So, libraries that have popular eBooks now potentially face the requirement of having to pay once again for those eBooks every year. Even a book that isn’t borrowed so often may wear out in just a couple of years – and this at a time when library budgets are under particular pressure, both in the UK and elsewhere around the world.

Do publishers really understand libraries?

Magazines like The Bookseller, along with groups of users, are currently campaigning to protect UK libraries. Publishers, too, make all the right noises when you ask them about libraries.

But when a large company like HarperCollins tries something like this – and it won’t be at all surprising if others introduce similar terms – so soon after the industry’s bonkers suggestion that people not be able to download library eBooks in their own homes, you could be forgiven for wondering if they’re really just paying lip service to the idea of libraries in a digital age.

Certainly these sort of actions give the impression that they’re more worried about the potential loss of sales should people be able to borrow books too easily. Perhaps I’m a bit too much of an idealist, but I think – especially in harsh economic times – the publishers would do well to support anything that helps people to carry on reading, and learn to love books, rather than to put obstacles in the way, and make it more expensive for readers and libraries alike.

The price of books themselves is something I’ve talked about before – read this piece on Register Hardware, for example – so I shan’t go over that in detail. What I will say is that this seems like a tremendous failure of imagination on the part of HarperCollins, who have opted for the simplest solution – ask libraries to buy the book all over again – when technology could provide for far more nuanced solutions, like an incremental charge on each loan over a certain amount.

Or, indeed, they could finally wake up and accept that, just as a library owns a book outright when it buys a print version, they ought to be able to do the same with the electronic one.

More on this at BoingBoing and the New York Times.

EU rules on sports rights – will it affect eBooks?

The news today has been full of information about a decision by an Advocate General to the Europan Court of Justice that the way sports rights are sold by territory may be against the rules of the single European market.

If you’ve not been paying attention, the landlady of a Portsmouth pub bought a subscription to a Greek satellite broadcaster, enabling her to show Premier League football matches rather more cheaply than if she’d bought one of Sky’s Pub subscriptions, which can cost several thousand pounds a year – quite a chunk of income for bar in the current economic climate.

She was taken to court by the Premier League, on the grounds that they sold exclusive rights to show their matches in the UK to Sky. Her argument is that since there’s a single market (and also rules that prevent countries blocking transmissions from other ones) then she should  be able to buy a subscription from anywhere, and the Premier League has no business trying to stop her.

What’s in the news today isn’t a final decision by the court – it’s just an opinion by one of their advisors, though they usually agree with such opinions. And it essentially says that the way rights are sold, on a country by country basis, makes a mockery of the idea of a single market.

Quite what will happen if the court agrees isn’t by any means clear – of course, people will be able to buy cheap subscriptions from other countries, but if rights have to be sold for the whole of Europe, rather than just the UK, they might cost more in the long run – effectively locking broadcasters in smaller countries out; you could see someone with deep pockets, like BSkyB, buying pan-European rights, and then selling them on in other countries, effectively establishing a base price themselves.

What about eBooks?

What does this have to do with books? Most of the coverage has mentioned other ‘audiovisual’ services – which is not that surprising, as they’re lumped together in various EU directives.

But it seems to me – and I stress that I’m not a lawyer – that this will surely have an effect on most businesses in which rights are sold by territory. As the Guardian story says:

Kokott said that the idea of selling on a territorial exclusivity basis was “tantamount to profiting from the elimination of the internal market”.

If that’s true of broadcasting football matches, it’s hard to see how it wouldn’t also be true of publishing, where the rights to sell a book may be held by a different publisher in each country.

Will that make any practical difference to people buying books and eBooks? I’d say that for people in the UK, it won’t make that much, because most of us are resolutely mono-lingual, and the only other place where we could buy books from in English – the US – won’t be affected by this ruling.

That said, there is a potential benefit, if a company based somewhere where VAT on eBooks is lower will now be able to sell English editions, as they may not be restricted to selling only books that are licensed to that territory. That could mean slightly cheaper eBooks for UK buyers.

Potentially the biggest gainers though, if – and it’s still only an if, lest we get carried away – this guidance does turn into a court ruling, and is applied to publishing rights as well as broadcast rights, will be people in other countries in Europe who want to buy eBooks in English, and find that they are unable to, because the current territorial restrictions mean that sites like Amazon or WH Smith will sell only to people in the UK.

So, it’s worth keeping an eye on this case. Unlike with TV subscriptions, there’s not much chance of it affecting pricing with eBooks, but it may well make it much easier for people in some countries in Europe to actually buy the books that they want, in the formats that they want.

Office of Fair Trading launches eBook price investigation

I’ve written quite a few pieces on this blog over the last several months about the pricing of eBooks, and in particular the price war that has failed to emerge following the launch of the Kindle in the UK.

In fact, prices have gone up, due in no small part to the publishers attempting to introduce a digital equivalent of the old Net Book agreement, in the form of Agency Pricing. This, essentially, allows them to force sites like WH Smith or Amazon to sell the electronic editions of books at a specific price, with no discounting allowed.

Discounting is still allowed on the printed editions, and the net result – aside from some dramatic increase in the prices of some eBooks – is that it’s quite common to find that the electronic edition of a book will cost more than the paper edition.

Now, I’m not one of those people who thinks that the cost of an electronic book should be more or less nothing, because as a writer I actually enjoy being paid for what I do, and the cost of producing a book involves a lot more than just printing it – design, typesetting, proof reading, and editing, for example. Those are all important if, like me, you prefer that when you read a book, characters’ names are spelt consistently, line breaks don’t appear half way across a line in the middle of a word, and chapter or paragraph breaks actually make it into the book – all problems that crop up in various eBooks, and make people even more annoyed when they’re forced to pay a higher price for a poor quality product.

You can’t take all the costs out of producing an eBook, if you want it to be of good quality. But you could probably reduce some of them, and I can’t honestly see a reason why shops should be allowed to discount print editions, but not electronic ones. Or indeed why you can’t get an electronic, searchable edition, when you buy the hardback.

So, I welcome the announcement today by the Office of Fair Trading that it’s going to investigate the pricing of books. Though, given colour of the current government, I doubt they’ll actually decide to do anything that’s in the interest of consumers, rather than shareholders.

For more on this topic, you might want to look at The Register’s take on the news, and the piece I did for them about eBook pricing a couple of months ago.

My roundup of eBook price changes from August to November 2010 is also worth reading, and if you want an insight into the collective lunacy of the publishing industry when it comes to eBook lending, then read this article.

There’s also an article about this at eBook Magazine, which is well worth a browse.

eBook price roundup – figures collated

Today, my latest piece on eBook prices has been published on RegHardware, and it’s generating quite a lot of comments. A few of those have suggested using public libraries as an alternative source of borrowing books – it’s worth reading this to see why that may not be such a simple option.

For those who want to recap, I’ve been tracking the prices of some eBooks here since Amazon launched Kindle, and comparing with how much I paid originally for some that I bought from Waterstones.

The first comparison is from August of this year. A collection of eBooks that originally cost £203.39 from Waterstones (some bought when VAT was lower) would now cost £239.59, or just £158.97 from Amazon, or £205.61 from WH Smith. Adjusting the original prices for the current 17.5% VAT rate would give £205.56.

In late August, I looked at just four books that I bought to take on holiday. Amazon: £17.12. WH Smith: £17.18. Waterstones: £33.86.

Around the end of October I checked prices again. At this stage, some of the titles in my comparison weren’t available from WH Smith and Waterstones – it turns out this was a prelude to the introduction of agency pricing. I was able to compare 21 that were available then and in August. Amazon: August £87.16, October £84.30. WH Smith: August £110.95, October £108.26. Waterstones: August £113.10, October £130.43.

Finally, for the November comparison I as published in RegHardware, most of the books are now available, so I can give a price again for the full 36 title selection. (Where some are not available on certain stores, I’ve used the publisher-set price quoted on Amazon, which it’s likely all will have to sell for eventually).

That gives the November prices: Amazon £184.62. WH Smith: £205.95. Waterstones: £227.95.

Here is a graph for the 21 book set. Note that three books were shown as not available from WH Smith but were priced identically at the other two stores, and I have used that price to compile the graph.

Chart showing price of a 21 eBook bundle between August and November, from 3 UK retailers

Why you may have to visit a library to borrow an eBook

This is a companion piece to an article for RegHardware on eBook pricing.

One of the benefits of the ePub format and the Adobe DRM that it uses is that it’s possible to borrow books from libraries. Books can be downloaded from a library, and will automatically expire after a couple of weeks.

The range of books available at the moment is somewhat limited, but hopefully it will increase over time, and it will make eBooks and readers even more useful for those who are unable to get to a library during opening hours. Obviously, there are potentially very significant benefits for the disabled who might not be able to get to a library at all, but even the able-bodied but busy can find the service useful too.

Many libraries around the UK operate an e-lending service in association with Overdrive, who also operate some bookstores. You can find your own library by searching at http://search.overdrive.com/ – my local Hackney library is included, though so far the collection of books is small, and I found it a little fiddly downloading a book and copying it to my Sony Reader – something that’s likely because I use a Mac, and the Mac version of Adobe Digital Editions doesn’t support transfer to the reader. In practice though, the system works, and works quite well.

Clouds on the horizon

Last month, the Publisher’s Association set down ‘baseline guidance’ on what libraries should expect when they offer eBooks for lending. That guidance says, in essence, that if you want to borrow an eBook, you’ll have to go to your library in person and download it on to your device there.

You don’t need to think too hard to see that this could, effectively rule out e-lending for many people, including some of those to whom it offers the most benefit.

Campaign group Voices for the Library described the policy as “potentially catastrophic for ebook provision in public libraries” and told me they were particularly concerned about the impact on disabled people.

For their part, the Publishers Association stress the guidance is not a line in the sand – publishers are free to allow ‘remote downloading’ of their titles if they wish, and they’re confident that solutions can be found for disabled users, too, perhaps by registering only certain users for access to remote downloading.

Why has this happened?

The catalyst – though the Publishers’ Association stress that it’s not a direct cause – would seem to be an incident in which library books were downloaded in China. In fact, hearing the report on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme, you might be forgiven for thinking that this was a widespread issue with remote lending.

According to Overdrive, that’s not the case, and there was just one incident, which was resolved swiftly. Overdrive works on the principle of one copy, one lender – so if a library has one electronic copy of a book, and someone else already has it signed out, no one else can borrow it until the rental period has expired, just like with printed book.

Accepting that there was just one case, when I talked to Richard Mollet, Publishers’ Association CEO, he stressed that the real issue was not that remote downloading happened, but that there was an assumption on the part of the library concerned that it would be ok if anyone were able to remotely lend, and their chief concern is that that could be “enormously damaging to the retail part of the market.” It was, in effect, a reminder of the need to have “sensible and reasonable” policies in place.

Full statements from both Richard Mollet, and Overdrive’s CEO Steve Potash, are at the end of The Bookseller article mentioned above.

Other library solutions

Meanwhile, some publishers are looking at other solutions for libraries. Public Library Online is a system backed by publishers like Bloomsbury and Canongate, and uses a Flash interface to allow access to books via the browser.

The service boasts that there’s no need to download anything, or to buy a reader – but it does also mean that you need an active internet connection to read the book, so it’s less amenable to, say, reading in bed or on the train, than the ePub download model offered by Overdrive.

At the moment POL is in a trial phase, and one of the publishers that I spoke with emphasised that it’s not in their plans to offer downloads via libraries at all, though retail eBooks will still be available. If you want to access their books via a library, it will be via POL or through borrowing a printed book.

The future

In terms of borrowing eBooks from libraries, I think it’s fair to say that the dust has yet to settle. Richard Mollet told me that readers aren’t going to see titles disappearing from their library e-lending services, and many publishers may decide they’re happy to allow remote lending for future releases anyway.

The view from libraries themselves is a little less clear – when I asked Hackney for a statement, I was told the library is awaiting more information from their supplier (Overdrive), and until then, remote lending remains available.

If remote lending does become restricted, personally I think it’s hard to see how eBook lending will take off, especially in the present economic climate. Across the country, local authorities are facing cuts, with staff layoffs and many library closures likely. That, surely, will make it even less likely that a system can be put in place to support users travelling to libraries and accessing computers on the premises, to load titles onto their readers.

Of course many libraries have computers already – but few people who have made the journey to one just for an eBook will want to wait while someone finishes their homework or whatever else is being done on the public PCs. And how many will find the extra cash to set aside a computer specifically for eBook downloads?

This article is a companion to a Register Hardware article on eBook pricing.

Update Feb 2011; broken Bookseller links now fixed