It’s all digital in Frankfurt

‘Ecosystems and the discoverability gap have been the main themes running through the two pre-Frankfurt digital conferences, Publishers Launch and TOC, with how publishers add value, pricing, piracy, and inevitably DRM not too far behind,’ reports Philip Jones on the Booksellers’ daily newsletter.

‘Concerns over the big tech players and their customer lock-in strategies were aired at Publishers Launch, where we learned that Amazon’s market share of a customer’s book purchases trebles once that customer acquires a Kindle (a worrying stat for Waterstones). Peter Hildick-Smith also attempted to quantify the “discoverability gap” we all now know is out there, coming up with 11%, which was roughly the recommendation black hole that opens up once a book reader switches to digital (and visits book shops less often).
By contrast, at TOC we were told that mobile offered new big opportunities for publishers, with books only read on those devices by 17% of users (for more on that see txtr announcement below). We were told that this market was actually more fractured, but important given that the mobile was becoming the first screen for many. There was also much talk of emerging digital markets (such as India), and also Japan: already one of Kobo’s largest international markets.
Lively panel sessions at TOC focused on pricing and piracy. Nielsen’s Ann Betts told us that e-book buyers do get accustomed to higher prices for digital content as the market matures, with $9.99 a popular price in the US now, compared to the UK where e-book buying was coalescing around 99p. On piracy and DRM the debate was more familiar, with the PA’s Richard Mollet confident that the association was beginning to get its message across to the government about not introducing exemptions to copyright. However, O’Reilly’s Joe Wikert doubted that we could “legislate our way to a solution”, preferring the O’Reilly solution of “trusting its customers”.’ read more updates on Frankfurt at www.thebookseller.com