More pricing madness with ebooks

I’ve just been looking for some books to pop on my Sony Reader for a forthcoming trip. I was going to get them from the Overdrive Library – I’m in Hackney, so there’s a small selection of titles available – but the website wasn’t letting me log on.

So, I decided to have a look at the WH Smith site, for a change, rather than Waterstones. It reminded me, once again, why I tend to use Waterstones, which is only mildy annoying to navigate, as opposed to the out and out bonkers train wreck of the WH Smith ebooks site. What’s wrong, for instance, with using sensible words like “Author” when you’re searching? Who on earth thought referring to “Creator” would make things sound more friendly? I could go on at length about the awfulness of the Smiths site, but I’ll save that for another day.

The main point of this is book prices. As I mentioned before, in the face of Amazon’s arrival in the UK, the prices at Waterstones appear to have gone up. They told me that, of course, some of the titles might have been on promotion when I bought them, especially if they were new releases.

Ok, so how about “The Fuller Memorandum” by Charles Stross? That was published in July of this year; it’s £4 at WH Smith or Amazon, and £7.54 at Waterstones.

And the ebook of Peter James’ “Dead Like You”, published in June this year? That has an RRP of £18.99, which is excessive for an eBook however you look at it, in my view. At Waterstones, they think they’re doing you a favour by discounting it to £13.29, while at WH Smith you can just pay £6.46 instead, and £6.44 at Amazon.

Two other titles for my reader, “A Quantum Murder” by Peter F Hamilton, £7.54 at Watersones, £4.00 at the Amazon and WH Smith. Stieg Larsson’s “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is £5.49 at Waterstones, £2.72 at WH Smith, and £2.68 at Amazon.

Total price for these four books? I paid £17.18 at WH Smith; if I had a Kindle, I’d have saved six pence. And if I’d gone to Waterstones, it would have cost me £33.86, or £16.68 more; that’s a 49% saving.

You can argue that competition is healthy, and the great thing about ePub and devices such as the Sony Reader is that you can shop around for your books. You could also say that, when companies like Waterstones charge so much more for books, it’s a damn good thing too.

eBook formats – a crash course

Following on from my post about book pricing in the UK and the related news item on RegisterHardware, I thought I’d outline where things stand with regard to the different types of eBook available in the UK, as it’s fairly important information if you’re thinking of investing in a reader.

The most important thing to remember is that not all books can be read on every reading device, and material for some can only be bought from certain places. In other words, it’s much more restrictive than the world of paper books where buying one book from Waterstones doesn’t, for instance, mean that you can’t buy anything from Amazon in future.

Three way split

For the sake of  simplicity (and because it covers most of the market) it’s simplest to say that there are three main eBook ‘ecosystems,’ each made up of reading devices, a format for the books, and one or more stores that sell books in that format. There is some overlap, which I’ll explain later. But the main thing to remember is that there are three different solutions. First, is what I’ll call ‘Amazon/Kindle’, then there’s ‘ePub/ADEPT’ and then there’s ‘ePub/iPad.’

Also, note that here I’m concerned only with paid for books that have protection; things are different if we’re talking about those you’ve created yourself, for instance. And I’m not going to touch on ‘converting’ books from one format to another, or older formats like Mobipocket.

The Amazon way

Kindle is the name everyone’s heard of when it comes to eBooks, and it’s an Amazon product. The Kindle reader understands books bought in its own format, which is sometimes referred to as ‘azw.’ As with most bought books, these are copy protected, so they can’t be distributed freely, and if you want to buy books for Kindle, then you have to go to the Amazon store.

ePub and ADEPT

Not everyone wants to have to buy books from one place, and there’s a common format called ePub, which is designed for eBooks. Lots of people make readers that can work with this, like the Sony Reader series, the Cool-er, and quite a few others. To provide security and stop books being copied, most of the people who sell books in ePub format use a protection system from Adobe, called ADEPT; you’ll also hear it referred to as Adobe Digital Editions, which is the PC and Mac software you use to download books you’ve bought. As well as allowing books to be bought, there are libraries that allow you to borrow books in the ePub/ADEPT format; after a set time, the book ‘expires’ so you can’t read it any more.

ePub and iPad

When Apple launched their iPad and announced that it would have a built in book reader and shop system, called iBooks, they made a big fuss about how it used the ePub format. What they made less fuss about is that – unlike almost every other reader and store that works with ePub – they aren’t using ADEPT. Instead, they’re using their own protection system, which means that if you want to buy a book and read it in the iPad’s own application, then you have to buy it from Apple’s store, just like you have to go to Amazon to buy books in the Kindle format.

Confused? Already?

That’s the basic information. What does it mean to you? Well, on the face of it, that means that if you buy a book from Apple’s store on the iPad, even though it’s in ePub format, you won’t be able to read it on a Sony Reader, because it uses Apple’s protection system, rather than ADEPT.

And if you have a collection of eBooks that you have bought from, say, the Waterstones online store, they’ll all be in the ePub/ADEPT format, so you can’t read them on the Kindle, nor can you read them on the iPad.

And, if you’ve bought a book from Amazon for your Kindle then, no, you can’t read it on your Sony Reader.

So far so good. Now – and I shall attempt to do this without resorting to a Venn Diagram – things become a little murkier, because it’s not quite as cut and dried as all that.

All aboard

Amazon really wants to sell you things. Lots of things, and not just books, though that’s what they’re famous for. They sell eBooks very cheaply but while the Kindle is the thing you’ll have heard of, it’s not the only way to read them. There’s also a Kindle app for the iPhone, iPad, as well as Windows and Mac PCs, Blackberry and Android phones. So, you can buy books from Amazon and read them on all these devices. Amazon’s system even remembers where you were in a book on one device, so if you pick up the same book on another, you’ll go to the right place.

And yes – iPad is included as one of those devices, so if you have one, there’s a choice of two places to buy your books now – Amazon or Apple’s own store. You’ll have to use a different application, depending on which books you read, though – the iBooks app won’t read the Kindle books, and the Kindle app won’t read the book s from Apple’s store.

It’s also been reported that Waterstones is planning to produce an app for the iPad, which will allow you to read books you’ve bought from their shop on Apple’s tablet. Until it comes out, it’s impossible to say if it will let you read any ePub/ADEPT book, but I would imagine that’s going to be the case.

So, though you may need different applications for books from different stores, it does look as it, when it comes to portable devices, the iPad will cover all the bases. Just a shame, then, that in my view it’s too heavy and too expensive and with the wrong sort of screen to be bought  purely as a dedicated reading device.

Left out?

What about dedicated readers, such as the Sony models and the Kindle? Well, because of the way they’re designed, you can’t load extra software on to them, the way you can add the Kindle app to the iPad. So, whether it’s a Sony Reader, or a Kindle, you’re stuck with the books that are compatible, and you can’t read anything else.

On the positive side, there are a lot of bookstores you can use if you have a reader that supports ePub/ADEPT, as well as public libraries. A shame about the book prices, though.

Also worth a mention is Kobo Books, who sell books in the ePub/ADEPT format, and have applications that allows you to read them on a range of smartphones too.

Note: Some links on this page include my Amazon associates ID.

Why I have mixed feelings about eBooks

I love my Sony Reader; it has a great screen, excellent battery life, and I can read outdoors in bright sunlight. But I still have mixed feelings about eBooks. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons.

First, there’s the issue of book prices, about which I wrote at the weekend. It’s always astonished me that, at least until the arrival of Amazon’s Kindle Store, you could actually end up paying more for an electronic version of a book than for a print edition.

Something that has had the physical printing and distribution costs taken out of, and doesn’t need the marketing incentives that chain bookstores insist on being paid to put a new novel on the table by the door, still costs more than the print version. It’s as if the publishing industry has looked at how the music industry handled the transition to digital and thought “Yep, we like train wrecks. We’ll go for that.”

A bit of imagination wouldn’t go amiss here; first, cheaper prices for eBooks should be possible; I know there’s the need for infrastructure, servers, and licenses for the Digital Rights technology, but I’m still pretty suspicious that that makes an electronic file worth as much as a hardback. What I’d love to see is innovative pricing – like “Buy a print edition, and get the electronic version for £2 extra,” so that I could have a searchable version on my laptop, or a copy on the Sony Reader to save weight when I go on holiday.

Price isn’t everything

Price, however, isn’t the biggest concern I have with eBooks. It’s to do with the market and the place for small bookshops within it. When I buy a print book, I never buy it by mail order, or even from a chain bookstore. I go to my local bookshop, the Stoke Newington Bookshop, and buy it there, or ask them to order it. If I’m visiting family in Winchester, I go to P&G Wells. We also have another good bookshop, Pages of Hackney, nearby, though I’ve not yet been in there.

And, I don’t mind paying a bit more to buy books from these bookshops. I think it’s vitally important that there are good independent bookshops. I appreciate that some people like the fact that you can get the latest Harry Potter at a discount in the supermarket, when you pick up your groceries. And if all you want is the most popular books, that’s fine.

But some people do want other stuff. They might want more political books – whether fiction or non-fiction. They might want gay books, or any of a range of things that, frankly aren’t going to find a space on the shelves in a supermarket. There are still specialist bookshops, like Gay’s The Word, but those are dwindling in number.

And what happens if the specialists and the small independent bookshops vanish? Those who want the more obscure books will find that they have little choice but to buy online, and many will be unwilling – or unable – to do that.

A person confused about their sexuality might be willing to buy a book and pay cash, but many will think twice if it means handing over their credit card and address details to a faceless corporation; some readers may recall the fuss in the USA when it was suggested that details of what library books people borrow could be requested by law enforcement organisations. Many people simply don’t like the idea of someone else, especially in authority, knowing what they’re reading.

So, whether it’s for their friendly, informed service, their promotion of local authors, and willingness to cater to the local community – or just the fact that you can walk in there and pay with cash – local independent bookshops are vital in ensuring that there’s a range of books available, beyond the big names that the chains and supermarkets want to sell and promote.

A white label store

And that causes me a dilemma; on the one hand, I want to support my local bookshops, because it’s vital to the idea of pluralism. But I like my gadgets, and I like the convenience of my Sony Reader, too.

Realistically, there’s no way that most independent bookshops could run their own eBook store. But I wonder if it’s possible to have a ‘white label’ eBook service. By that I mean something that’s run by several of them, or by an independent organisation, which allows bookstores to put their own ‘skin’ on it and, ideally, to highlight the books they think are important, and to set their own pricing, so that they can compete on a more level playing field.

Of course, there’s always the danger that few organisations can compete with the Amazon juggernaut, though Apple will doubtless try. But I’d hate to lose an ecosystem like the more open ePub/ADEPT one, where you can buy whatever reader you like, and buy books from wherever you like. I can stock up my Sony reader from Waterstones, or WH Smith, or any one of many other online stores. And I’d really like to include my local bookshop in that list.

I think it’s also possible for independent bookstores to add value, and give people another reason to shop there. They can bridge the gap between eBooks and the way books have traditionally been sold.

Imagine, for instance, if your local bookstore could retail eBooks, and even help you load them on to your device. So, people who don’t have a computer can take their reader along, and the nice young man behind the counter will be able to say “There you go, I’ve put your latest John Grisham on there, Mrs Higgins.”

And – though it might take some thinking about the mechanics of it – they could even do some of this anonymously, allowing people to buy eBooks with cash if they wanted, and rather than having to use their own email address to authorise their eBook reader, customers would have an anonymous account at the local bookshop.

I don’t think this idea presents any obstacles that are insurmountable, technically. How much would it cost? No idea. And I don’t know any booksellers to ask them what they think of the suggestion.

But I do know that local independent bookshops are too precious a resource to allow them to wither away, without at least trying to find a way for them to fit into an increasingly digital future.

Note: Some links on this page include my Amazon Associates ID.

How much is Kindle? A year of eBooks from Waterstones

Or: Why I think Waterstones has lost the plot

Amazon has launched its UK Kindle store with a predictable blare of publicity. The new UK device will cost £149 with WiFi and 3G, or £109 with WiFi only, which compares very well with the cost of other readers – Sony’s Reader Pocket is £124 at WH Smith, and of course has no Wifi or 3G. I already have a reader, though, so what interested me was the price of the books, and whether or not the arrival of Amazon will make the UK’s eBook stores buck up their act (and both WH Smiths and Waterstones could do with whole new sites, frankly).

Since buying my Sony PRS505, I’ve bought thirty seven books for it from Waterstones; now, I know there are other places out there, and that’s the great thing about ePub – you can (unless you’re using an iPad) buy your books from a range of stores. But Waterstones is the site that Sony pushes their customers towards, it’s a known name on the High Street and I suspect it’s one of the highest profile eBook sellers in the country.

Anyway, between May 2005 and Jun 2010, I’ve bought 37 books from Waterstones in ePub format, costing me £208.65. How much would it cost me to buy those on a Kindle, I wondered. So I popped along to Amazon’s UK Kindle store, armed with a list of the books I’ve bought.

Big savings, and a death wish

The headline figure: I could buy the same collection of books that I’ve bought, right now, from the UK Kindle store for £163.60. Now, the astute amongst you will see that that’s actually a saving of around £45 for shopping at Amazon, so how did I come up with the headline of this post, claiming a Kindle is a year of eBooks from Waterstones?

The price I quoted is what I spent, so the prices relate to how much a book cost at the time I bought it. What, I wondered, if I were starting out with eBooks, and wanted to buy everything from scratch, today?

You might think that, with the biggest name in the eBook business opening up shop in the UK, Waterstones would be striving to protect their business and, perhaps, being just a little bit competitive, wouldn’t you? I’d certainly do something if a big competitor was moving onto my turf.

But the thing I probably, almost certainly, wouldn’t do is put my prices up. Yet that seems to be what Waterstones has done. If I bought the same collection of books now, it would cost me £239.59, or thirty quid more than I’ve spent over the last year. In fact, it’s a bit worse than that; one of the books is no longer listed on the Waterstones site, so in all the other comparisons from here onwards, I’ll remove that book, and we’re now looking at a selection of just thirty six.

For those thirty six books, then, my original cost was £203.39. The price I’d pay to get them from Waterstones now has gone up by £36.20, to £239.59, which is about 18% more.

Meanwhile, those same thirty six books would cost me £158.97 on from Amazon, a saving of £80.62. Still not quite the cost of a Kindle, but I’ve not given up on paper books entirely yet, and probably still buy around a dozen or so a year from the Stoke Newington Bookshop. If those paper books were also replaced by electronic ones, I’m pretty confident that the saving from all my book buying in a year, by using Amazon rather than Waterstones, would amount – at the very least – to the cost of the WiFi edition of the UK Kindle.

Essentially, if you buy a lot of eBooks (say 40-50 a year) from Waterstones, even if you already have a Sony Reader, it’ll probably cost no more, and likely be cheaper, to switch to Amazon and stump up the cost of the new Kindle too.

What the hell are Waterstones playing at?

Buying elsewhere, and VAT

Of course, one of the things about ePub (except on iPad) is that you can buy from elsewhere, and there are other bookstores. The other High Street name that’s involved in selling eBooks in the UK right now is WH Smith, and so I did the same comparison on their website. The same selection of thirty six books would cost me £205.61 from WH Smith, which is a little more than I paid originally, but £33.98 cheaper than buying from Waterstones now. That still leaves Amazon about £47 cheaper, though.

One thing to note is that eBooks are subject to VAT. As far as I can tell – neither the online receipts nor the email versions from Waterstones list the VAT rate charged, which I’m pretty sure is against the regulations – Waterstones charges UK VAT. That means that all those books I bought in 2009 had VAT at 15%, while those I’ve bought this year have it at 17.5%; so have I been unfair in accusing Waterstones of a price hike?

I went back to the figures, and readjusted the price of all the books, as if there had been 17.5% VAT on them. That made the adjusted total for Waterstones £205.56, around £2 more. In other words, the change in VAT has had no significant impact on the prices. Even after allowing for the VAT increase, the price of the thirty six books I bought from Waterstones has gone up by £34.03 since I started buying them, in May 2009.

There are – and I intend to write something later in the week – many objections people have to the Kindle business model, or simply to the idea of a large foreign-owned company coming in and cleaning up the market.

But, frankly, when the UK book stores aren’t competing, and one of them seems to be actually putting up the prices of eBooks in the face of Amazon’s arrival, they deserve everything they get, and the public deserve much better service.

Note: some of the links in this article use my Amazon Associates id. Not that I’ve ever made any money from it, but I thought I should make that clear.