Where to from here for the eBook New Zealand market?

As e-books become more prominent in New Zealand, there is a question on booksellers, publishers and consumers lips: Where to from here for the ebook New Zealand market? Jenna Tinkle, Whiteirea Publishing Student, reports.

This was a panel discussion with Jonathan Nowell (pictured right), Paula Browning, Tom Rennie, Martin Taylor and Lincoln Gould.

Jonathan Nowell opens the discussion with by analogising the digital book market with King Lear’s kingdom – just as Lear divides his kingdom between his three daughters, we divide our market between three major players: Google, Apple and Amazon.

The speed at which US book sales are declining is increasing. As an example, he displayed photos of the inside of a Barnes & Noble New York store where there is now less space for actually selling books.

According to Jonathan, the advantages of ebooks are immediacy and accessibility, but you can’t give ebooks away or lend them to your friends. The average US book buyer will not pay more than $9.99 to download an ebook.

Jonathan gave us insightful reasons to be cheerful. For instance, New Zealand consumer confidence will recover as people come to terms with the new reality. Consumers are looking for value.

There will also be more heavy book buyers. The book market used to focus on young people but instead we are going to be catering to the old. The baby boomer generation are heavy readers and will come through and buy books.

Tom Rennie is creating the digital publishing programme for Bridget Williams Books. They feel very ambitious about what ebooks can achieve for booksellers in New Zealand. Tablet sales are supposed to double in this coming year. Kiwis are actively using ebooks. As an industry, publishers and booksellers need to catch up with libraries’ use of Overdrive.

We need to establish our own frame of reference for ebooks in this industry. Public perception of ebooks is driven by the US market. We need to be aware of this and we need to be aware of what is going on in our own market. According to Tom, we need a sophisticated approach to ebooks because it’s not going to be a straight shift for all the genres across the industry. Currently, the genre sales of ebooks are dominated by romantic fiction and sci fi. We need a sophisticated approach to cater for each genre. Ebooks disrupt the supply chain but there is a huge amount of content that is entering the market – loads of titles on backlists and out of print or out of copyright that are now entering the market place in ebooks.

How do people find books? Through social discovery, social recommendations and local discovery. Thus, local bookstores need to service this discovery and they are the ideal retailers to do this. They can use their already established social networks in their community. This is how they will distinguish themselves from Amazon. Once local booksellers are equipped to sell ebooks they will be able to promote these in their local communities and use their networks in the community to drive sales and to play off current events.

Martin Taylor believes there are some fantastic opportunities in the digital world. He is adamant that the main issues that publishers and booksellers face in the digital space are to do with rights, negotiating and extracting them. He throws out his own ideas about what will be achievable. For example, we should utilise the already established system of gift vouchers and introduce e-book gift tokens.

These could even possibly be substituted for a p-book (printed book). A longer term plan would be to make connections between people browsing in bookstores but buying online, so that booksellers can get a share of profit of online shopping.

By and large, Martin believes there are several digital opportunities that can be created here, especially with NZ books because we have more control over the rights.

Lincoln Gould from Booksellers NZ closed the discussion asserting that bookshops are going to have a very strong part to play in the digitisation of the industry and this new e-book world.

Linked by passion: Growing sales through local retail partnerships

Report on conference panel discussion by Megan Dunn, Projects Manager at Booksellers NZ

Panel members were:
Becky Anderson, Anderson’s Bookshop (USA), and Margaret Kouvelis, Poppies Feilding.

The panel was chaired by Carole Beu of The Women’s Bookshop (Auckland).

Margaret Kouvelis (pictured right) said she has a passion not just for books but for people.

• Poppies six years ago had the opportunity to have an indie bookstore in a very beautiful town with 14,000 people and a district of 39,000 people.
• Margaret was warmly greeted by the people of Feilding with a potplant when she opened Poppies!
• “We don’t operate in isolation, collaboration is key.”
• “I believe in the plentiful model, the more you engage with people the more books you sell. Customers are our friends. I urge you all to cultivate your customers as your friends. It doesn’t matter if you have many or few, what matters is they come back to you.”
• Engaging with community is the first and most important thing we do where ever we are. Margaret has recently stood for council and is now standing for mayor!
• People gather in bookshops and talk about things, it is a place to share grief in the community. Bookshops not just for books – they’re for courage, companionship and big hugs.
• Feilding Promotions is part of why Feilding is beautiful. It’s not just about supporting business community but supporting a business environment. “We would not be thriving so much in our community without Feilding Promotions in this dedicated role of supporting the community.”

Becky Anderson, President of the American Booksellers Association (ABA) 

• “We have a downtown neighbourhood alliance, which is a great organisation that supports local businesses.”
• “Always support your local merchant, it only comes back to you in spades and supports your community.”
• Anderson’s Bookshop ran an event for the the launch of the first Harry Potter book and 80 children came. By the third book and event they had 7,000. From there, events brought 50,000 and then 70,000 people to town – by then the event was community-wide with some businesses having not only great business days, but the best selling day of their life.
• “Partnering with your community builds such goodwill.”

Anderson’s bookshops run these events: 

• We do blood drives every time there is a vampire book! Teenagers love it. 
• Use a restored movie theatre to partner for large author events to benefit to the whole community.
• Got health books to sell? Promote through events with fitness trainers.
• The more creative and the more fun it makes it, the more you build community, the more you build business for yourself.
• “The partnerships we make with schools are invaluable.”

Partnering with other businesses makes our shopping areas and our main streets, that much more vibrant.

The launch of Indiebound at conference

Whitireia Publishing Student Hannah Newport-Watson reports on the launch of IndieBound by Megan Dunn and Lincoln Gould (Booksellers NZ)

Booksellers launched a new website and marketing package today, for an international project called ‘IndieBound’, a new subscription service now available to members of Booksellers NZ.

IndieBound offers booksellers a marketing toolkit, containing thousands of dollars of advertising – posters, t-shirts and more – all promoting local book shops. IndieBound originated in the Sates, part of a whole movement to shop local. Megan spoke about how customers enjoy engaging with something that’s authentic and locally produced. Customers want to shop in a way that’s in line with their own personal values.

‘IndieBound is not just about marketing, it’s about bookstores and promoting them. It’s about getting people to shop local,’ said Megan.

The ‘Eat Sleep Read: support your local bookstore’ poster is one example of the material available through IndieBound. Of course, every book store is different – there’s a whole range to choose from and can even design their own t-shirts. Stores can make the decision what’s most useful to them and how big they want to go with the programme.

Booksellers NZ members can access IndieBound for free until October 2011. To get the password, email Megan.

Davey Hughes: I’m Gonna Die Screaming

Booksellers NZ Conference report by Jenna Tinkle, Whitireia Publishing Student

A giant close-up picture of a grizzly bear with sound effects introduces who else but Davey Hughes, aka ‘the Swazi Man’ (pictured right). He launches straight into his talk but asking the audience’s opinion on his outfit: flash boots, a big farmer’s hat. He’s ready to take us on an adventure.

His new book Untamed he describes as ‘a smorgasboard of his life’ and is one that he wants people to be able to pick up and chop and change through an abundance of exciting adventures. Recipes, poems, photos his wife made him take over the years and of course a fantastic array of stories about his exciting adventures.

He has the audience in fits of laughter from the get go.

He starts us off on a Tanzanian Safari – when he chartered a plane to fly him over the Selous National Park. He flew over the tops of elephants, kept lions at bay at night, and hunted buffalos, the most challenging of the animals to hunt: ‘A buffalo looks at you like you owe them money’ – they don’t need a reason to have a go at you. But it’s worth it to persevere and catch one, as their tongues are delicious.

What do you wear on an African Safari? Well if you’re Davey Hughes, a fluorescent yellow vest, a red tutu and bright pink leggings. And of course, like all Swazi apparel, these clothes have high UV protection.

Next stop: The Russian Far East. The main reason for his trip was to save the tigers – an idea that arose from a people’s market in Beijing, where it was shocking to Hughes to see endangered Amir tiger skin sold.

Hughes wants to prove that hunters are indeed conservationists.

So what can we do here in New Zealand? Quite a lot. It seems kiwi practicality goes along way with Hughes setting up the Siberian Tiger Trust, which raised enough money to send a vehicle to the Russian biologists, satellite phones – kiwi practicality is giving Russian biologists the chance to save tigers in their wilderness.

Next stop was a little closer to home: Auckland Airport, where he was accused of belonging to the Russian Mafia for wearing a Russian hat and coat … telling the customs official that he was ‘here on business’ in a Russian accent probably didn’t help matters either.

Davey Hughes has the Booksellers conference in fits of laughter – and truly brought his work Untamed to life.