It's easy to experience fear and anxiety in the face of the e-book tipping point, which I believe is imminent,” admitted Allison Hill, president and COO of Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif. She's not alone. With so many e-book options seemingly out of the reach of independent bookstores, many booksellers at the ABA Winter Institute expressed similar concerns. Since the January institute, evidence continues to mount—like Barnes & Noble's purchase of Fictionwise—that the technology could be moving too fast for independents to get in front of. While some booksellers are looking for ways to get in on the digital action, others, who remember the CD-ROM hype of a decade ago, question whether e-books are where they should be putting their energy to boost sales.
At Powell's Books in Portland, Ore., which has sold e-books since the days of the Rocket eBook in the late 1990s, e-book sales don't come close to the triple-digit increases that have excited publishers. E-books hover around 2% of overall sales, said Darin Sennett, director of Web stuff, who adds that Adobe titles, which can be read on the new Sony Reader, far outsell other formats. While romance is one of Powell's strongest e-categories, the store, which discounts e-books 20%, also does well with nonfiction, how-to and textbooks used on work stations and laptops. But many of the store's e-bestsellers are niche titles not found on traditional lists. That's because writers like Philip Shepard, author of a guide for opera singers who want to work in Europe, What the FACH?!, direct readers to the Powells.com site.
Rather than try to compete head-to-head with Amazon in the e-book arena, some booksellers are taking what Neil Strandberg, manager of operations at Tattered Cover in Denver, called “a stagger step.” Tattered Cover is one of several large stores talking with Symtio, which provides plastic cards at retail discounts that have a code to download an e-book, audiobook or, in some instances, both from the Symtio.com Web site. “Buying this card is a familiar type of transaction,” said Strandberg, who acknowledged that it may not be a long-term solution, as people become more tech-savvy and realize that a piece of plastic is unnecessary to obtain a digital book.
At present, though, Symtio is one of the few in-store e-book options available. It is currently being tested in CBA stores and will roll out to ABA stores in the next 90 days, according to senior v-p Tim Close. Initially, Symtio's content skewed to the Christian market, but it has since added the Harper catalogue (Symtio is owned by HC) and anticipates signing at least three trade publishers within the next month. By the end of April, estimated Close, Symtio will offer more than 14,000 e-books.
Booksellers with BookSense sites automatically offered customers the option of buying e-books. But as the ABA moves its updated IndieBound sites to the Drupal Web framework, that option has been eliminated. The ABA plans to resume e-book sales later this year. “Once the migration to the new platform is complete, a meaningful digital content solution needs to be our top priority and main focus for the immediate future,” wrote chief program officer Len Vlahos in a white paper presented to the ABA board in March.
Ingram Digital currently provides e-content in three formats for BookSense.com sites and for Powell's.
Like Vlahos, Hill at Vroman's has a strong sense of urgency about getting on the e-book bandwagon. “When our e-book function goes live again this summer [Vroman's uses one of the IndieBound Drupal sites], we plan on launching a full-blown e-book education initiative and support service for our customers. We want to make Vroman's store and Web site the destination for customers' e-book needs,” said Hill. “We want our customers to realize that we can still provide them content and that, as usual, it is our service that distinguishes us from any competitors.”
The increased media attention on e-books has translated into more inquiries from both individual booksellers and hosting groups at Ingram Digital, according to v-p and general manager Andrew Weinstein. The company's program offers access to more than 150,000 e-book titles, with genre fiction, particularly romance and science fiction, being the strongest sellers.
Dick Harte, however, is moving his BookSite operation, which provides Web hosting for booksellers and librarians, away from e-books, at least for now. He has removed BookSite's e-book module from its new platform, because, he said, most e-books were purchased accidentally, when customers clicked on the option for the lowest price. Harte estimated that only one in 25 orders was valid. “I am more concerned about allowing e-books to unfairly siphon sales from the traditional channels via the guise of proprietary policies manipulated around a device,” said Harte. He has no intention of investing in digital features until he sees evidence of publisher policies allowing independent booksellers a reasonable opportunity to generate at least 5% of total store revenues from digital products, including audio downloads.
Another bookseller with a wait-and-see attitude is Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Maine. “Using technology to communicate with our customers and to stay relevant is vitally important to me,” Brechner said. “If we can come up with a viable platform that makes sense with our business model, then we need to do that.” For now, though, he sees e-books being used as a wedge by Amazon to economically disenfranchise independents and other competitors.
For bookstore owners who see e-books as a nonstarter, one major concern is price. “You're not going to make 40% of your margin on e-books,” said David Didriksen, president of Willow Books & Cafe in Acton, Mass. “Therein lies the problem, as I see it. You're making pennies per transaction; e-books are a pipe dream. Books still sell every day.” In a similar vein, Mitchell Kaplan, cofounder and owner of Books & Books, headquartered in Coral Gables, Fla., plans to continue doing what he does best. “I have to serve my core customer, and that doesn't fall into the realm of e-books,” he said. “We have to provide value of a different sort. We focus more on a sense of place, providing a place for people to come. Can you stop an Amazon? While we can't do electronic books well, they can't capture a big share of what we do well.”
