Japanese mobile phone novels: On their way or not for us?

Book publishers are now presumably all aware of the Japanese craze of novels being written for, and directly downloaded onto, mobile phones. If they’re not, then they have no excuse, as $82 million is being spent on them in that country alone per year, and it’s not as if publishers can ignore that kind of a market.

So lets presume Random House, Penguin, Hachette and all the other large publishing conglomerates are aware of the trend. The question we have to ask ourselves is: why aren’t they out in the West?

- Technology?: Hardly. The format of the file does not have to change form the Japanese to other phones, and the level of mobile phone market penetration in some European countries rivals that of Japan.

- Distribution?: Nope. All the major networks already sell ringtones, backgrounds, etc very successfully through their websites. We’re used to it and so are the networks.

- Content?: Possibly. It took the Japanese 5 years to come up with the style of writing that became popular: namely bare-bones romantic and relationship based novellas. Up to that point they tried to sell successful authors, and other novel style content unsuccessfully. Perhaps the publishers of the West are having difficulty commissioning such lowest common denominator content from scratch, instead of the gradual literary degradation that happened in Japan. It is also possible that the English alphabet is proving more difficult to read on a small screen than symbol-based Japanese, causing entrepreneurs in the West to shy away from the idea.

-Culture?: Not every trend that does well in Japan does well in the West. It is almost taken for granted that whatever the Americans do the Europeans will be doing in a few years, but Japanese culture is different enough to introduce considerable uncertainty. They are much more tech savvy (or obsessed) in general than the Europeans and Americans, so their rapid takeup of this technology might be giving false optimism to forward thinking Western businesspeople.

I don’t think there is a good reason why this trend hasn’t been offered to European mobile phone subscribers yet. It would be very difficult to not make the first step profitably. It’s not as if the network will have a warehouse full of wasted stock if the first one doesn’t sell. Maybe we’re just waiting for someone to unite a mobile network with the appropriate content provider…

 

Why are book publishers not grabbing the Long Tail with both hands?

After speaking to the D&C Production Manager I have a newfound appreciation for the complexity of the logistics involved in publishing. The cost and timing of everything is precisely calculated and coordinated so that all parties involved are able to do their jobs and make money.  The many blogs and sites that have been commenting on how the media is likely to react to the long tail have at times suggested that the paper publishing trade is too old-fashioned and technophobic to adapt to these developments. The truth is slightly more complicated.

Although the quality of POD digital printing is climbing, it still is not to the standard that litho can deliver, and is not good enough for illustrated full colour volumes. When the quality does reach that level, it is still likely to be a while until the per unit digital printing costs drop sufficiently for publishers to make enough profit on their book printing shorter runs. It is true that under the long tail publishers will save money on storage, distribution and marketing of individual titles, but until the digital printing costs come down “printing less of more” will not be cost effective. 

The other option is for publishers to sell electronic versions of their books through a website. In contrast to POD, the margins on an e-book are much more attractive to a publisher. This side of the issue is sort of ‘chicken and egg’; the publishers have already committed a certain amount of resources into making and promoting ebooks, but the public just haven’t taken to them in the way that they had hoped. Whether it is due to the lack of a familiar distribution channel, poor handheld technology, the discomfort of reading from the screen, the enduring popularity of the book, poor promotion or a combination of these is hard to say, but publishers are being cagey about committing further to it until they understand more about it.  

Experiments in releasing books both in print and in e-formats have shown that there does not seem to be an impact on book sales when free electronic content is released. Nevertheless book publishers are very aware of the impact on CD sales that free music downloads had, and to date have opted to stay out of the race rather than take a risk. At any rate, publishers are right now keeping an eye on developments in new technology with a view to exploiting them if and when they can offer a better solution than what they have.

 There are certain steps that publishers can take right now to make their business more LT friendly, eg S&S’s move towards contracting authors without rights reversions. Some think that this move was on the foolish side of brave. Another LT characteristic to be found in the book trade is Amazon’s extensive customer recommendation system.  Similar models are being adopted by publishers’ websites.

For example, D&C have an affiliate links system, which rewards web masters for displaying links to the D&C online bookshop. This is related to the LT in that it represents a marketing effort aimed at a very narrow band of consumers, namely the traffic of that particular site. The web master chooses a book that he believes his visitors will be interested in (with his expert knowledge of them) for the ad, as his reward is relative to how many books are sold through his link. 

 I’ll develop this topic, and those on earlier posts further over the next couple of weeks when I have time off. Bye for now!        

 

I want electronic text, and I want it now!

Here is my response to Journalist Danuta Kean’s article on e-book technology.

“…I think Danuta hits on a few very good points: one is that it is very hard to say that ereaders will explode along the same lines as the ipod, and secondly that the ebook format offers too much to not catch on.

It’s not just a matter of age that leaves her unsure of the technology’s future. I’m a student in his early 20’s, and I don’t know if a reading device will be able to embody a “mass-market coolness” in the way that the ipod has. Why? Because music is simply different to reading. I find it hard to picture an advertising campaign based on an ereader with the same impact of Apple’s dancing silhouettes in the ipod advert. Literature is something that it’s fans tend to enjoy due to its exclusivity.  Of course I could be proved wrong…

My contemporaries and I are so used to the convenience of researching online that I’m sure a site selling electronic academic texts would make a killing. I’m sick of walking up to the library only to find that it’s closed due to a Bank Holiday, or that I haven’t got time to queue for the photocopier cos it’s nearly 7 pm. Both of these problems: access and distribution would not effect an e-book.”