Wednesday Midday Links: B&N losses higher than expected; Dramatic declines in e-ink device purchases
Samhain is having a nice sale on 6 featured titles. Two include Devil’s Gate by Thea Harrison and Wolf Line by Vivian Arend. 30% off using coupon code “BeachReads”. Store.
EBook Revenues Beat Hardcovers For The First Time | TechCrunch – “The Association of American Publishers released a report today that shows that ebooks have beaten hardcover revenues for the first time. Ebook revenues topped out at $282.3 million YTD while hardcovers hit $229.6. Almost exactly a year ago the tables were turned with ebooks hitting $220 million and hardcovers brushing past $335 million.” TechCrunch
Personal Note: Mass market numbers are down 20.8%
Mike Shatzkin talks about selling direct and whether publishers must add this to their arsenal. Many of the people I spoke with at BEA expressed concern about selling direct. The concern that Shatzkin articulates in his post:
Selling direct will become an essential capability for publishers to have – – The Shatzkin Files The Shatzkin Files – “What I took away from what I read Madeline saying was “we don’t have to execute the transaction in order to have direct customer contact and knowledge.” And what I also took away is, “whether it is because we don’t want to hurt our intermediary retailers or because we don’t want them to hurt us, we’d rather avoid competing with them. And if we sell our books direct, we are competing with them.”That’s a powerful concern and it is built into the DNA of the biggest trade publishers. Selling direct works against the magic of trade publishing, which is the leverage provided by so many intermediaries helping reach the end consumer.” Idealog
What I found fascinating about this next press release was that there were two individuals identified as managing the Amazon.com account. There was no other retailer mentioned by name? How important is amazon? Apparently to HC, important enough to have one person designated to rep them with AMZN:
HarperCollins Reduces Sales Force – GalleyCat – “Brian Grogan SVP, Sales … will… become the main sales liaison with the publishing and marketing teams at Avon Books. Media Bistro
Kindle Sales Plunge Made Amazon.com’s Gross Margin Look Better – Seeking Alpha – “Amazon.com has slowed down its demand for Kindle eReader e-ink screens to near zero since December 2011, the month after the Kindle fire was introduced. Basically at that point Amazon.com had enough Kindle eReaders’ screens on hand to fill demand for at least 4 months straight. “Our major customer was too optimistic about its sales in the fourth quarter of last year and ordered too much from us,” Liu told an investors’ conference in Taipei. “That made the customer order almost nothing from us in the first quarter” Seeking Alpha
I asked around and it seems that the blame for the losses related in the next article regarding Barnes & Noble is related to new hires and increased development costs:
Barnes & Noble 2012 Sales Results: Nook up 45%, Digital Content up 119% | Digital Book World – BN took a loss for the fiscal year 2012 despite a 2% increase in brick & mortar book selling and earnings increase of 5%. Nook content sales increased 119%. … For 2012, the Nook business took in almost $1 billion in revenue, clocking in at $933 million, a 45% increase over the previous year. Digital content sales on the Nook were $483 million for the year, up 119% versus last year.” BN Sales Results
