Poll: Will Sony help the e-book market to grow?

[Alexander Turcic]

Do you think Sony's involvement in the e-book market will ultimately help the market to grow, or is it the opposite? I see two scenarios:

• Scenario 1:
  • major book publishers cooperate with Sony
  • e-books at "Sony Connect" online store available for considerably less than p-books
  • consumers happy
  • "iTunes for e-books" effect: online sales become a major revenue source for every participant
  • iPod effect: other vendors offer alternative hardware readers to catch a slice of the market
• Scenario 2:
  • major book publishers cooperate with Sony
  • e-books at "Sony Connect" online store available at p-book prices
  • consumers unhappy, have to pay the same amount and are stuck with DRM-infested proprietary format
  • "iTunes for e-book" effect stays out, marginal revenues, publishers retreat
  • iPod effect stays out: no followups to the Sony Reader device

Related: Poll: Which e-reader would you choose?

[Brian]

I'll stay on the fence for now and say, "It depends."

I agree with your two scenarios, but will offer a third. Sony could do as they have done in the past and use draconian DRM, their own proprietary formats, and charge a price premium the their e-books and device. If they were the only player, this would be bad and could stifle the e-book market. With others entering the market like iRex technologies and Jinke, Sony could price themselves out of the market and lose the format battle. Because of the past false starts in the e-book market combined with Sony's history, I think a lot of publishers might look at the alternative instead of staking their future soley on Sony. Let's just hope that iRex Technologies can attract large book and newspaper publishers to make things competitive, and I wouldn't forget about the possibility of other major consumer electronics/computer makers to enter the e-book market with a device (or devices) tied to a content deliver system. A certain company in Cupertino comes to mind.

[Laurens]

The way I see it: if the e-book market is to ever break into the mainstream, it will be because of the backing of big companies like Sony. Actually, I don't see any other company with the financial and marketing muscle that Sony has stepping into the market any time soon.

I wouldn't pin my hopes on iRex. Spec-wise their device looks great, but they are only a small startup. Maybe they'll end license their designs to bigger companies like Philips.

[rlauzon]

I don't believe that Sony will be relevant to the eBook market. So far, they have produced a couple of trials, but they still think with their head in the sand.

"iTunes for ebooks" won't happen (or at least I hope it won't). Proprietary formats are ALWAYS bad for the consumer and some iTunes users are figuring this out. Sony is all about proprietary-ness and it doesn't look like they are going to change anytime soon.

The big producers of eBooks will be places like Project Gutenberg and Fictionwise that offer open format eBooks at a reasonable price. We already have content, we just need the device to enjoy it. If the device doesn't support the content types that we have (like Sony's new device), then it will fail in the market.

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by Laurens

The way I see it: if the e-book market is to ever break into the mainstream, it will be because of the backing of big companies like Sony. Actually, I don't see any other company with the financial and marketing muscle that Sony has stepping into the market any time soon.

I wouldn't pin my hopes on iRex. Spec-wise their device looks great, but they are only a small startup. Maybe they'll end license their designs to bigger companies like Philips.

I agree completely. Even if Sony doesn't do it well, e-books have so many advantages that if they bring it to the consumer in a half-way reasonable form I think it can succeed, or at least start the move to mainstream. But, oddly enough, I think we might see more e-books sold for cell phones and i-Pods than for a sophisticated and full-sized e-book reader like from Sony.

As for iRex, It's probably going to be so expensive and relatively unknown that I don't think it will make a big dent in the consumer market. I hope, though, that it does well with the corporate market and with tech geeks like us so they can continue to develop more great products.

[pitcher23]

Those are both pretty good scenarios but I would have to go with a depends as well. While current ebook readers and those into technology have no problem accepting ebooks as the standard, there are many out there that are dead set against giving up paper. I can see scenario one becoming a strong possibility if SOny hires a marketing team as good as apple did with the iPod.

Sony could greatly increase the adoption of this technology if they worked with the department of education and text book publishers. If they offered these to schools at a greatly discounted prices with the text books of their choices, also sold to schools at a discount, it would be a win situation for all involved. Schools would save money. Kids would save their backs. Publishers, though selling at a lower price, could more than recoup that cost with the elimination of the cost of the actual paper book and Sony would win by getting kids to grow up accepting ebooks as the norm.

Sony has the marketing muscle and capital to make this scenario possible.

[rmeister0]

Scenario number 3.

Sony offers e-books at below p-book prices. Consumers see the cost of the reader and decide they don't care, if they even hear about it to begin with.

I still think this is a product in search of a market, rather than a market in search of a product as far as the "mass market" is concerned.

[Lorphos]

Look at the prices on this screenshot - I'd say we are heading right for scenario 2.

Bummer. OTOH, I think itunes is charging too much for their DRM music...

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by Lorphos

Look at the prices on this screenshot - I'd say we are heading right for scenario 2.

Ick! No wonder Dan Brown was advertising for their services. So Sony sells his e-book for $14.95 while eReader sells it for $13.46 (note how they compare their price to the hardcover edition!), Fictionwise for $12.71 (after rebate), and Amazon for $10.17.

Thanks for the screenshot, Lorphos!

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by Alexander

Ick! No wonder Dan Brown was advertising for their services. So Sony sells his e-book for $14.95 while eReader sells it for $13.46 (note how they compare their price to the hardcover edition!), Fictionwise for $12.71 (after rebate), and Amazon for $10.17[/url].

Yup. Yet another example of how they just don't get it.

There is no reason whatsoever, for an eBook price to be even close to a p-book price. None. The majority of the costs of a p-book simply aren't there (or are very, very small) for eBooks.

And when you add DRM into the mix, effectively eliminating your right to re-sell your book when you are done with it, the price drops even further.

[Jorgen]

Sony will undoubtedly sell many readers in the beginning and therefore introduce many people to ebooks; it will take years before they find out that they due to the DRM are "married" to Sony - just as it has taken years for PDA ebook buyers to understand that they some day will be the happy owners of worthless DRM books. When that happens noone will buy DRM books and it will disappear just like the DOS protection schemes disappeared in the late 80ies.

[rmeister0]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

There is no reason whatsoever, for an eBook price to be even close to a p-book price. None. The majority of the costs of a p-book simply aren't there (or are very, very small) for eBooks.

Because, of course, the servers, data center floor space, electricity, connectivity, operations staff, programming staff, data storage, and bandwidth all come free.

[TadW]

Doesn't Apple sell songs on iTunes for less that what you'd pay in a store - and with a great earnings margin for them? I'd say virtual storage + logistics comes a lot cheaper than physical storage + logistics.

[Laurens]

Maybe people are unfairly slamming Sony for making e-books so expensive. Aren't the publishers setting the prices?

[rmeister0]

Originally Posted by TadW

Doesn't Apple sell songs on iTunes for less that what you'd pay in a store - and with a great earnings margin for them? I'd say virtual storage + logistics comes a lot cheaper than physical storage + logistics.

Apple won't disclose the details, but in one of the last year's analyst conference calls they let slip that itms was not a break-even proposition. It's widely understood that itms is a sales driver for iPods, not the other way around.

In other words, Apple is selling the razors and giving the blades away.

Also bear in mind that the logistics of physcial books are not entirely born by the publisher. Once they ship to the distributors, or to the retailers, the cost of operating the business is no longer theirs to pay.