ebook – Ruediger Wischenbart

Juni 22, 2021 In audiobooks, digitization, ebook, Europe, Germany, Pub Statistics

NEW: Ebooks, audiobooks, sales, subscriptions, streaming – the Digital Consumer Book Barometer 2021 is out

More digital book consumption, new audiences, a sustainable upswing:

2020 was a breakthrough year for digital consumer books, bringing new opportunities in reaching new audiences and an expansion in e-book and audiobook consumption in subscription, e-lending and streaming models.

The Digital Consumer Book Barometer provides detailed insights and analysis based on solid and exclusive market data in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, French speaking Canada, Brazil and Mexico.

Lockdowns, home office and home schooling have boosted digital consumption of books across all formats and channels, opening new opportunities to the book business, with similar developments across all markets and segments.

Sales soared, triggered in spring 2020 at first by the impact of pandemic restrictions. But soon, after a short lull in summer, the trend turned out to be a sustainable game changer for the entire digital book business.

One of the major surprises was the gain in popularity for subscription services and related models of continuous consumption, as in digital libraries or audiobook streaming from music services. In both German language markets as in Brazil, the increase reached massive gains for subscription and e-elending year-over-year from 2019 to 2020.

Good news for traditional publishers operating in the digital fields is that price levels could by and large be kept stable over the past 5 years in most countries, including Italy, Germany, or French speaking Canada. In more volatile markets such as Mexico or Brazil, the overall average price level went lightly down, but publishers found out, as good news, that consumers embraced not only cheap thrills, but were prepared to pay even more for high quality titles.

Overall, after ebooks having been losing some appreciation by book market commentators lately, a turnaround with sustainable gains seems to be the outcome of 2020, as is shown by the uniquely granular data analysis in this report.

The Digital Consumer Book Barometer, started by Ruediger Wischenbart Content and Consulting in 2018, is regularly updated and dwells on real sales data provided by leading international digital distributors and aggregators, notably Bookwire (German language markets, Spain, Latin America), Demarque (French speaking Canada), edigita (Italy), Libranda (Spain and Latin America), and Readbox (German language).

Download the Digital Consumer Book Barometer here.

Mai 2, 2021 In audiobooks, authors, book markets, book statistics, digitization, ebook, Europe, Germany, Pub Statistics, retail, US

Reboot Books > „How To Fix What Is Broken“. On increasing efficiency, ‚going direct‘ and better rights trading

In case you have missed the recent online debate at ReBoot Books on April 21st, find here below some key talking points from the discussions – and a 16 minute video excerpt from the panel „In search of the final consumer„.

As a registered member of ReBoot, you can even view the full three sessions in the ReBoot Box!

The day-to-day challenges under pandemic market conditions for a publishing company are adding up to a long list, said Planeta’s CEO Jesús Badenes in his opening statement at the ReBoot online debate on April 21, 2021.

The business has become more complex, with smaller average print runs and other titles gaining in popularity as book buyers‘ references changed. For the head of the largest publishing group in the Spanish language, the key to an efficient management response can be boiled down to a four-letter word: Data.

Having the right data at your finger tips allows to better manage the inventory, finding the right balance between increasing digital products, and using flexible print-on-demand solutions for physical books, which helps to lower returns and make ecommerce more customer friendly.

This allowed Gerd Robertz, CEO of German BOD – a provider of both PoD and of author & self-publishing solutions, and a sponsor of ReBoot – to follow up seemlessly. These same solutions are available not just to big corporations – Planeta’s turnover tops that of New York based Simon & Schuster, or French Editis group. Even small independent publishers or a self-published author can provide the same convenience in fast delivery, and harvest resulting data insights, to develop a strong and targetd marketing.

Publishers and retailers must „build a customer journey„, added Jason Spanos, Chief Revenue Officer at KNK, an internationally leading software provider to the book business, and a sponsor of ReBoot. During the pandemic, KNK particularly focused, with a newly established, dedicated team, on monitoring how quickly customer engagement and habits were changing. „We simulated meetings at libraries, or in coffeeshops, or now in their online social exchanges“ for learning to quickly adapt to new patterns of engagement.

Gaining data, organizing them within one company, or even sharing data more openly that what is common today triggered the subsequent lively debate between both speakers and experienced book professionals in the audience.

Today, said technologist Matt Turner, people interact digitally in order to then buy physical books – or opt for entertainment media instead of a book, like series or games in streaming TV.

Thus publishers must learn to better understand their own products and, as Anne Bergmann of the Federation of European Publishers added, explore the co-existence between sales and streaming services for e-books and digital audiobooks, in order to avoid mistakes that had done great harm to the music and the audiovisual services a decade ago.

Companies need to integrate workflows and data flows within their organization, and not just look at data gained through distributors and retailers, argued Brian O’Leary of the New York based industry think tank BISG.

How all this can be brought to fruition in the day-to-day company life was richly illustrated by Julie MacKay from the American subscription platform Scribd, Peta Nightingale from the British author services platform Bookouture, which had been acquired by Hachette, as well as Rafaela Pechansky of the Brazilian reading community TAG.

How well established in innovative forms to connect and network are seen in the trade of rights and licenses will be summarized in a separate blog post in a few days.

You can’t wait to access the full debates in video recordings – and join us also at the next live event on June 15, 2021, then you should become a full member of ReBoot. Registration is simple at https://rebootbooks.org/

März 16, 2021 In audiobooks, digitization, ebook, Europe, translation

Offering a training programme on innovation and cultural diversity in literary translations launched for small and medium-sized publishers.

5 renowned book industry organizations team up, with support from Creative Europe, to disseminate market insights and practical learnings about novel approaches in publishing.

Apply now for the SIDT innovation training modules

The SIDT initiative – standing for “Sustaining and Innovating cultural Diversity in literary Translations” – introduces a pilot project for professional trainings to small and medium sized independent publishers, distributors, and retailers across Europe.

These actors often spearhead translations of new literary voices across Europe. But in an increasingly competitive market for cultural media, including books, making such cultural diversity work commercially, too, has become a challenge to many stakeholders.

Literature needs to be catered to multiple niche audiences, in print and digital, across various distribution channels, and marketed through dedicated communities of readers. This requires venturing into innovative business and delivery practices, driven by digital tools and platforms.

Overall, 4 different training modules of around 10 to 12 hours each will be offered to interested practitioners, first between April and June 2021, and then a second time in the autumn of this year. Topics will range from “digitization of the publishing workflow”, and “radical innovation” approaches, to “user-centric marketing” and “new business models”, notably in publishing operations specializing in translated fiction.

Each module will introduce a group of around 20 to 25 trainees to market overviews and practical case studies, elements of innovative business practices and hands-on group work. Experienced industry practitioners will act as trainers, together with professional moderators.

Participation in the modules is free but subject to submitting an application with a detailed questionnaire and a motivational letter, available (with more details on the project and the modules) at www.sidt-books.eu; the project management board will retain the final decision on applications.

SIDT is a joint initiative of Beletrina Academic Press, Ljubljana, Slovenia, the Federation of European Publishers, Brussels, Belgium, the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, Madrid, Spain, Lietuvos Leidėjų Asociacija (Lithuanian Publishers’ Association), Vilnius, Lithuania, and Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, Vienna, Austria, as a project coordinator.

The project is co-funded under the Creative Europe programme by the European Commission.

Contact and information:
SIDT Books
info@sidt-books.org

März 8, 2021 In audiobooks, bestseller, book markets, digitization, ebook, Europe, Pub Statistics, reading, US

It is all about the details! ReBoot’s workshop „Assessing the Damage“ identified winning and losing experiences in the international book business under the pandemic.

The season’s first workshop in the “ReBoot: Books, Business and Reading” on 25 Feb 2021 took off with promises of a wild ride between some countries and segments where the book trade significantly expanded, driven by an increase in reading, while other markets and segments of the industry had to confront loss and swings in consumer habits.

Print book sales in Germany, Austria and Swiss 2011 to 2020 (data by MediaControl, analysis Ruediger Wischenbart.

Print book sales in Germany, Austria and Switzerland 2011 to 2020 (data by MediaControl, analysis Ruediger Wischenbart Content and Consulting).

In Sweden, publishers recorded gains in revenue of 8.7% in 2020 – and a stunning surge of +21.5% in (mostly digital) units. For the first time digital overtook physical sales, and most of digital turnover was earned through audiobook subscriptions.

The USA saw 9% more copies shipped, while revenues stayed flat with +0.8%. The real drama however required to go into the details, as online sales surged by +43% in 2020, bringing print books up +8.2% in revenue, and ebooks +12.6%, while physical bookstores, drowned by -28.3%.

Germany (-2.3% in book revenue) and France (-4.5%), the two usually boringly robust European markets saw each an up and down along the Covdid-19 year, shaped by lookdowns and closures of bookstores, followed by bold interim recoveries, praised as proof for the resilience of the book sector. But again, a deep rift opened, setting apart the overall market performance from a much more challenged brick and mortar retail sector, where turnover dropped by -8.7% and unit sales even by -12%.

In Poland, unit sales were remarkably robust, but returns fell off quickly, as heavy discounting led to price wars. E-commerce moved mainstream even in countries with a particularly low digital penetration, like Greece.

Overall, the ReBoot workshop provided data and analysis on some 20 different territories all over Europe and the Americas, covering namely Argentina, Austria, Brazil, China, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, UK, US, and by industry segment fiction and nonfiction, as compared to children and young adult, as well as by formats and sales channels – notably print, ebooks, audiobooks, e-commerce, and subscriptions, as well as digital library lending.

In many countries publishers found themselves in a stronger position than retailers. Pandemic sales hit hardest the big chain bookstores, while giving some advantages to small independents and, of course, online (or omni channel) shops. Digital library loans soared. Backlist titles gained ground, while front-list – put aside a few blockbusters – saw their share in decline. And in many parts of the industry, new alliances and new fields for experimentation opened.

We are grateful to all participants, and in particular to those sharing their insights and learnings, including Andrew Albanese (US), Johanna Brinton (UK), Carlo Carrenho (BR/SE), Giacomo D’Angelo (IT), Sonia Draga (PL), Michalis Kalamaras (GR), Thad McIlroy (US), Gerson Ramos (BR), Enrico Turrin (BE/EU), and Burcu Ürsin (TR).

A complete video recording of the session, and presentations with rich data and detail, will be made available to all registered ReBoot members in the ReBoot Box.

Register now at www.rebootbooks.org to get your pass offering access to the Box and to the next Reboot events on April 21^st and June 15.

We thank our sponsors Media Control and the Austrian Ministry of Culture for their crucial support.

Dezember 14, 2020 In Amazon, audiobooks, book markets, digitization, ebook, emergingmarkets, Europe, Germany, publishing, US

Launching ReBoot 2021: The Repair Shop. Assessing the damage and fixing it!

ReBoot 2021: The Repair Shop. Assessing the damage, and fixing it.

After a widely received first season in fall 2020, with four Preparations Workshops and a 6-hour state of the industry debate on October 13 – attended by 200 experienced industry leaders from 28 countries in a unique mix of heads of worldwide corporations and small local innovators –, it is time to move on.

In the first half year of 2021, ReBoot proposes a systematic assessment of the damage, based on a rich survey of multiple data sources and intertwined with a structured set of workshops, with the goal of comparing lessons, experiences, and proposed solutions.

ReBoot will focus on how authors, publishers, suppliers, and retailers:

Operate in highly dynamic markets, defined by changing consumer habits and mounting competition for consumers’ attention and budgets;
Manage seamlessly multiple formats, business and distribution models, while new entrants from other media industries approach the same audiences;
Learn to directly target consumers, build sustainable communities around more granular audiences, and attract the best creative talent for books and readers.

The Repair workshop calendar foresees three units of 2-4 hours in the first half year of 2021:

25 FEB 2021: Assessing the damage, and identifying the key lessons for looking forward;
21 APR 2021: How to fix what is broken, and who can offer the best tools for that aim;
15 JUN 2021: Navigating to new islands and sailing with the winds of change.

You can subscribe to all three ReBoot units plus get permanent access to the ReBoot Box, which contains rich and relevant documentation plus video recordings of all sessions, at a flat rate of € 149, or buy tickets for each unit separately at € 99.

We invite sponsors and partners to engage with ReBoot on a continuous basis, with customized cooperation packages starting at € 5,000 for 1HY2021.

Find out about all details, and register right away at www.rebootbooks.org.

You can recap ReBoot in fall 2020 in 3 blogposts:

Workshops 01 and 02 (on consumer habits and on hybrid publishing here)
Workshops 03 and 04 (on supply chain and on bookselling here)
ReBoot: The Conference here.

November 13, 2020 In Amazon, audiobooks, authors, book markets, digitization, ebook, Europe

Music or books? Both! Spotify goes audiobooks

Things tend to change quickly these days. In August, publishers across Sweden had a new, transformative customer knocking at their doors – Amazon.

The only surprise was, why that had happened not much earlier. For many years, Amazon had been expected to go into the Swedish online retail market with a dedicated Swedish website, which by now is live.

A few months later, another new entrant is calling, an originally Swedish, now global service for music and podcasts. „Spotify has entered the book industry’s battle for audiobook listeners“, in the word’s of the leading local publishing trade magazine, SVB.

The Spotify announcement is probably as big as the earlier news from Amazon, and not just for Sweden. In these times of profound transformation of everything throughout our societies, the Spotify – audiobook move means simply that an outsider is coming in the ambition to re-invent the one segment where the traditional book business has been growing in recent years, audiobooks.

And Sweden is a very particular market in that regard. It has been pioneering ebooks and audiobooks early on, by making these things different than in other countries. Ebooks were initially an almost exclusive service from libraries. You did not buy an ebook in Sweden, but rented it from your local library.

This opened the path for subscriptions. You don’t need to own that new crime novel, or classic, or educational title. Accessing it, for a modest monthly fee, was good enough.

While in other parts of the world, book people insisted religiously that subscriptions would never work with readers, the Swedish start-up Storytel created – and in the meantime expanded internatonally – just this, a thriving subscription service for et first ebooks, and then audiobooks. Storyel was one powerful driver, and innovator in the good old book trade.

But the upside-down does not stop there. Spotify, the music company, promises to re-invent the very format of books that you can listen to: „‚We talk about trying to develop the story in different ways, and are quite unlimited in the idea of what it could be‘, says Johan Seidefors, Nordic content manager at Spotify, when he is asked if Spotify makes audio books“, SVB reports today, and Seidefors adds that Spotify „will work to make room for new formats.“ There you go publishers.

Of course this will bring up many tricky questions, starting with how authors‘ compensation will be handled by Spotify, which is challenged regularly for their royalty model from those musicians who are not topping the charts.

And we can, from our own research, clearly predict also that marketing digital works, be they ebooks or, even more so, audiobooks, and again notably those consumed through a streaming or subscription function hugely differently from traditional books. See numbers and charts in our two brand new Digital Consumer Book Barometer studies on German language countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), and on Brazil.

We will keep monitoring these developments – so stay tuned, and subscribe to our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter @wischenbart and @rebootbooks .

August 29, 2020 In book markets, ebook, Europe, Germany, publishing, reading, retail

NEW: The Virus and the Books A Special from the Digital Consumer Books Barometer!

How did the Covid-19 sanitary crisis and the resulting lockdown impact on the ebooks and audiobooks consumption? Measuring transformative change, and lessons to learn for marketing digital consumer books:

Flat subsription models on the rise;
Ebooks successful beyond genre fiction;
Smart and highly targeted PR and marketing effective in gaining new consumer groups.

Free download from www.global-ebook.com – a Bookwire Insights report!

More on digital sales analysis in the Digital Consumer Book Barometer is a deep dive into today’s ebook and digital audio sales in Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and English Imports:

3 years of sales data history;
Sales by price segment and country comparisons;
Comparisons by units and revenue;
Lifecycle of top selling titles;
Sales by genre.

Barometer for free download at www.global-ebook.com

The Digital Consumer Book Barometer 2019, a pioneering survey of international e-book and audiobook market trends.

The Digital Consumer Book Barometer 2019 explores sales trends in e-books and audiobooks in Canada, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Spain as well as foreign language imports. Based on real sales data provided by leading distributors, it monitors and analyzes the impact of key parameters like season, price points or genre category in both units (volume) and revenue (value).

The Barometer 2019 can be downloaded free of charge here, and at its sponsors.

With its innovative and in-depth mapping approach, the Barometer allows authors, publishers and retailers to optimize their catalog strategies as well as finetune their marketing approach.

Audiences increasingly make their choices of content purchases by picking rather the stories that they are interested in, and not by function of format, like a printed book or e-book or audiobook.

This game-changing shift in consumer preferences is reflected in the report title “Digital Consumer Book Barometer”, to highlight the format-agnostic methodology of the Barometer survey.

The Barometer 2019 builds on experiences of the Global eBook series (since 2011) and the premiere European e-Book Barometer of 2018 by Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, who also initiated the new report.

The Barometer 2019 is a broad and inclusive collaborative effort of book distributors, notably its sponsors Bookwire, DeMarque, Libranda and the International Publishing Distribution Association (IPDA), together with additional data providing partners CB (formerly Centraal Boekhuis), Ingram Content Group and Readbox.

Oktober 5, 2018 In book markets, book statistics, digitization, ebook, Germany

Ebooks are different! We better re-think (and measure) digital consumer books altogether.

For gaining a more realistic understanding of digital markets, creators and consumers, new instruments are needed to measure and structure sales. And we deserve some novel ideas to grasp how ebooks, self-publishing, audio, streaming and ‚Studio‘ platforms relate and compete:

The new „European eBook Barometer“ is a unique collaborative effort for sharing deep sales data and analysis for Germany, Italy The Netherlands and Spain. Check a free download here;
The wide strategic panorama of our White Paper, „eBook 2018: Phase 02“ here makes sense of how multiple formats, competing business models and distribution channels, and entirely new players struggle with the new preferences of the consumers.

Digital consumer books multiply their appearances, dissemination channels and business models. The eBook barometer and the strategy White Paper Phase 02 provide orientation in the digital market environment.

Februar 20, 2018 In amazon, digitization, ebook

„The ebook is a stupid product“, says Arnaud Nourry of Hachette. I agree.

Celebrating 10 years of Hachette India, Arnaud Nourry, sharp and outspoken as always, flatly nailed it in an interview with the Indian Scroll.in: „The ebook is a stupid product.“

Of course he is right. And our dear colleagues of the French publishing trade news site of Actualitté are plain wrong by interpreting the statement as a „missile“ against e-books.

As we have already emphasized earlier, no great ideas have been added over the past 10 years, since the introduction of the first Kindle. It is also fairly shortsighted to argue that books are not supposed to have any features aside from profiding a clean page layout and typography, and eventually a nice cover. Oddly, only these simple books, offering a quick read of suspence, or romance, or fantasy, have been turned successfully into electronic reading stuff. For everything else, again in the words of Nourry, „we as publishers, have not done a great job going digital.“

Indeed. Take the example of travel literature for a growing global tourism industry, as was noted by Philip Jones in The Bookseller. The sector is expanding. But it was not the publishers who brought in the harvest from the extended demand for information, from sightseeing guide, to hotel and restaurant suggestions, and all the many related services. Instead the extra revenue was gobbled up by platforms like TripAdvisor or Google.

The same is true for learning. Several hundreds of million people across many countries on all continents have risen to an at least modest middle class life, which includes higher aspirations for their children’s education. Yet, educational publishing has not re-invented itself to be fit for the new opportunities.

Theoretically, e-books would offer amazing opportunities for any kind of niche publishing, as an e-book can be effectively created on any laptop computer, then distributed over the Internet, and promoted to specialized target audiences via social media all over the planet.

The same applies for small markets, like small linguistic communities or countries. Or the big populations in regions with little purchasing power. E-books can be cheap, as is demonstrated by astounding organizations such as Worldreader.

But honestly, outside of romance fiction, how many such innovative approaches from publishers would you be able to name? Aside from the Canadian author and reading community Wattpad – which, incidentally partners with Hachette.

Countless innovative opportunities are lost by publishers in these, and many similar cases.

I realize that I may be a little unfair to those publishers. Because the technical format, the platforms for creation and distribution, and the technical offerings to read anytime, anywhere, conveniently, on a screen, have not been created by publishers, but by tech companies, from Amazon all the way down to programmers doing a little open source application for organizing e-books, like Calibre. How poor do their improvements over one decade compare to, say, smartphones! And hardly anyone, aside from readers, has cared.

Perhaps this is the core challenge to the publishers today: How can this slide be reversed, so that, once again, book people and innovative minds care again about each other! A big challenge it is.

How did the Covid-19 sanitary crisis and the resulting lockdown impact on the ebooks and audiobooks consumption? Measuring transformative change, and lessons to learn for marketing digital consumer books:

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