It’s a strange business plan that says
let’s sell ebooks online in our entertainment section of our website, and do
them in epub form only -- while in our stores we’ll sell an ereader that takes
mobi files. But that’s the course the British supermarket giant Sainsburys have
been following the last few years. Not so surprising, then, that Sainsburys are
closing their ebook shop down.
They’re not alone in making seemingly
suicidal business decisions. For quite a while Waterstones had been selling the
Kindle ereader in-store while selling non-Kindle epub format ebooks online.
If the Sainsbury’s decision to sell
epubs and Kindles seemed like a company shooting itself in the foot, then
Waterstones was shooting itself in the head.
After all, Sainsburys are a supermarket.
They sell clothes, CDs, DVDs, stereos, homeware, fresh produce and food and
detergents and all the other stuff that you’d expect. Books, too (though sadly
the space for books seems to be shrinking in some stores). If they don’t do
well in the ebook market and their traditional published books sales fall flat,
well it’s a pity, but it’s not the end of their world.
Waterstones sells books, end of. Well,
just about. They may sell a few Game of Thrones amulets and cups with some
literary link or other, the odd t-shirt. But I’m sure you’ll agree that the
mainstay of their business is books.
And yet someone thought it would be a
good idea to put the biggest threat to the business’s livelihood in-store and
encourage people to buy a product that, by definition, would reduce the sale of
physical books. Not only that, but they invited in a company that sells books
online, often at a steeply discounted price. Amazon’s range of books in stock
is massive, often featuring import titles not readily available in the high
street, and if you’re prepared to pay the postage, you can usually have the
book delivered to your home in a day or two (or five to seven days for free if
your order is over a tenner). By contrast, if Waterstones hasn’t got a book you
want in-store, then you can order it from them, and in, say, a week’s time you
may get a phone call telling you to come on in and pick it up from the store.
Oh, and it’s there at the full retail price.
Given that, was it a smart move to bring
in the biggest threat to your continued existence into the store? Not only
that, Waterstones rigged up free wifi so you could bring your Kindle into the
store and download ebooks from Amazon while you sat in one of their few comfy
seats (often after you just looked on the shelves to see the book you were
after was £8.99 for the paperback and the Kindle ebook was £3.99). Huh? It just
felt like Waterstones didn’t know how to react to the threat of new competition
and held their hands up in surrender.
Amazon is already the largest market
shareholder in the ebook business in the UK. Its nearest rival (with the damp
squib non-arrival of the Nook*) is Kobo. For my money the Kobo ereaders are
superior devices to the Kindle ereaders. Formatting is simpler, the display
options are considerably more advanced, and they don’t load your screen with
adverts.
But all that’s by the by for the sake of
my argument here.
The important part of Kobo’s business
that needs to be emphasised here is that they sell ebooks alone. They’re not Amazon; they’re not selling physical
books at steeply discounted prices. They’re not moving into the food business
to threaten Sainsburys, and they’re not setting up bookstores in the high
street to rival Waterstones.
In such circumstances, then, if you were
going to partner up with a firm selling ereaders and ebooks, surely the natural
partner would be Kobo.
The book and magazine retailer WH Smiths
followed this plan, and seemed to have got it right. But they needed support.
They needed publishers to get behind them, to offer up incentives for buying
the Kobo from WHS. Tie-in vouchers or discount coupons with actual physical book
purchases, that would encourage both
physical and epub ebook sales. Tie them in with another high street retailer
like Waterstones and there’d be a bigger presence and more brand recognition
for the Kobo ereaders.
But none of that has happened. And now,
coming up to the busy pre-Christmas retail season, what’s happened? WHS has
stopped stocking the Kobo in stores. It’s possible a few of the bigger stores
have them in stock, but I haven’t seen them.
There are some who argue that none of
this really matters, and argue honestly and sincerely, because Amazon are doing
such great things for writers. This is mostly true. Amazon has broken the
shackles traditional publishing has placed on writers. It’s forcing traditional
publishers to move on, to get with the future. But right now, Amazon are
heading for complete market domination, maybe even a monopoly in ebook and
ereader sales. At the moment they are fighting for every penny for their
writers because there is some competition left. But will that change when they
are the only business in town? Ask their employees in their “fulfilment centres”,
on zero-hour contracts, no workers’ rights beyond the most basic. Is that the
future for the writers who are so reliant on them too? I hope not. Just as I
hope that the Amazon warehouse workers get a better deal soon.
If you’re buying a new ereader for someone
this year, the best ereader out there is the Kobo.
But the best format video device back in
the day was the Betamax.
And if you were born before 1980, you
all know how that ended. (If you don't, then you can learn all about Betamax here.)
If you want to buy a book, WH Smiths and
Waterstones have a presence in most high streets across the country. And
Sainsbury’s sell the latest bestsellers, often with a good discount. For now.
__________________________
* Barnes and Noble - a US book-chain
even larger than Waterstones is in the UK - pioneered the Nook as a rival to
Kindle. They’ve stopped supporting it now, which in itself is hardly going to
endear their customers to them. No wonder that Barnes and Noble are, I think,
on their third CEO in nearly as many years.
