Digital Report 2015

E-books are a significant format, yet absurdly in 2015, there is still not industry reporting on e-book sales in South Africa as there is on physical books. It is time that retailers and publishers began reporting their e-book sales (local and international sales) to SAPnet or some other such body, so that we as stakeholders in the industry are better able to understand the growth and trajectories of the e-book industry. In the absence of this data, any comments made on the sector are anecdotal and/or speculative.

Trade
In an attempt to provide some meaningful feedback, I scoured many sites for articles on the state of e-books. I found that e-books have progressively fallen out of the news over the last 2 years. We need to extrapolate that with the proliferation of devices, ongoing familiarization of digital media and expansion of network access (e.g. Project Isizwe) that is occurring in the market, so is and will e-book consumption continue to grow. We can also speculate that the consumption of e-books alongside or in place of physical books is becoming so commonplace that it is no longer making waves.

Higher Education
E-book sales continue to grow, but not at the high growth levels of previous years, largely due to the fact that growth is now off a large rather than small base. That being said, acceleration in growth is expected again once the experimentation that is taking place around e-book supply models beds itself down into models that are optimally beneficial to stakeholders. Such models will become more widely applied. It is expected that this stabilization will be delayed by disruptive experimentation around channels and models of supply driven by technology companies. The landscape of competition in the market is hard to determine at the moment as there is notable growth in sellers of e-textbooks across publishers with their direct approach, re-sellers and vendors, and technology players. Note must be taken that there is room for growth in the range of availability of titles here.

Library
“On the Library side this year saw the acquisition of Ingram’s MyiLibrary platform from Coutts by Proquest. The e-books for Library space is still dominated by Overdrive, EBSCO, eBrary etc. Local players like WWIS are finding it difficult to gain traction in a market with established players and their local agents as well as Publisher’s own e-journal subscription services. Worth noting that a well-known vendor like SWETS Netherlands BV (Headquartered locally in Pretoria, Gauteng) underwent bankruptcy proceedings earlier this year showing how tough the e-book/e-journal library vending market became,” reports Melvin Kaabwe, incoming Digital Sector Chairperson for the SA Booksellers Association.

FET
Due to the fact that e-books are sold on a B2B basis (between Publisher and Institution) the transition to e-books is taking place rapidly, and not piecemeal, as different faculties/institutions move the whole of their student bodies across. Concomitantly, the highest growth rates were shown in this sector.

Schools
With significant content available, complimented by user friendly, workable delivery channels like Snapplify and their Snapbox, growth of e-book sales is bullish in the education sector. This growth is further expected to accelerate as the R17bn budget for the paperless classroom is expanded to further the roll out and adoption of digital texts. We are in dire need of empirical data to properly understand this sector.

John Jacobs