It is one of the burning and ongoing questions facing content producers – namely how do you price and sell digital versions of products that are also available as CDs, books, magazines, newspapers and movies.
It's an issue that has seen the music industry, in particular, tie itself in knots, with labels and artists coming to terms with one technology (downloading) only to see it superseded by the far less appealing prospect of streaming. Newspapers too have struggled. As physical sales fall, publishers have had to decide whether to build audiences by offering ad-supported content for free, or to squirrel away their content behind a subscriber-only paywall.
In contrast the world of book publishing has arguably had a much easier ride. In contrast to the record industry, publishers have offered digital books on very much the same terms as their paper counterparts -in other words, the customer pays and receives a book in return.
In that respect the industry has been helped by the nature of book publishing. Record albums are comprised of songs, which can be consumed individually. Online newspaper readers often look at one article before moving on elsewhere. In these situations it's harder to retain the idea of value. Books on the other hand are sold as complete item and even if that product is nothing more than digital code, what appears on an e-reader has a certain psychological weight.
But that doesn't mean that publishers can breathe easy as they contemplate the digital future. Pricing is an issue, particularly when consumers weigh up whether or not to buy a digital or physical copy. Meanwhile, self-publishing is on the rise, boosted by easily available ebook creation tools and download sites.
And for new and possibly self-published writers, it's a difficult market. With millions of books to choose from online, consumers are taking a risk when try something new. So why take a chance when you can settle for the new Hilary Mantel or Martin Amis.
Pay What You Want
So how to you market and sell new, edgy or challenging authors in the online book market.
Polish startup OpenBooks.com believes one answer is to let readers download first and pay later via an online bookstore populated with its own authors. And more importantly customers who buy from OpenBooks' online store can pay what they want. “Readers can download an eBook for free in EPUB, MOBI or PDF, read it, copy the file and share it with their friends and decide if and how much they want to pay based on what they feel the book is worth,” says the company's CTO Tomasz Staniak
In some respects, its a controversial approach. OpenBooks doesn't attach rights management coding to its files and actively promotes the idea that anyone who downloads a book should feel free to not only recommend it to friends but also share it. Staniak acknowledges that many people – writers and readers – will feel uncomfortable with the concept but he believes that in the digital era attitudes must change.
Sharing is not Stealing
“At first, pay what you want may feel awkward, but it makes sense with the different ways we consume literature now,” he says. “There of course has to be a revolution, especially in the common mind-set that open sharing is not stealing, and that readers need to have right to choose.”
And, of course, OpenBooks is open to the accusation that this model panders too much to the demands of end-users while forgetting the interests of the writers. It's the same accusation that has been levelled at music streaming sites such as Spotify . In a traditional digital publishing model, paid downloads guarantee revenue. Adopt a pay-what-you-want model and the authors could conceivably make very little, even if several thousand files are “purchased.” But Staniak is adamant that readers need “the right to choose.”
Equally he believes the model will pay off for writers as consumers become accustomed to paying for something that they like. Indeed,. While its early days, he says the stores payment record has so far exceeded expectations. “The results we have seen so far are really encouraging,” says Staniak. “We made the prediction that we will have around 100 payments in the first three months, around five thousand downloads and the average payment will be around $1. We currently have over 300 payments, 10 thousand downloads and the average payment is around $4.5.”
In the short-term at least its hard to see established writers or publishers flocking to this model. Record labels accepted the streaming concept because the alternative was to stand by and watch free, pirated downloads proliferate. The publishing industry doesn't face quite the same pressures.
However, as a means to launch authors or raise the profile of new books it's an idea that could gain traction
