Stephen King has also shaken up German publishers
Book publishers are still hesitant about e-books and books on demand, while the supply of electronic books is growing rapidly in the USA.
Book publishers are still hesitant about e-books and books on demand, while in the U.S. the range of electronic books is growing rapidlyBy Aline GrafWith his e-book "The Plant," which he sold solely over the Internet, Stephen King blazed a new trail in the book marketing segment. What has already become part of everyday life in the book industry in the U.S., the development of e-books, is still observed with suspicion in German-speaking countries. A foray through the offices of German book publishers.
The Droemer Weltbild publishing group, based in Munich, can record 75,000 "real visits" worldwide every month. Claus-Martin Carlsberg, Head of Press and Public Relations, comments: "We are moving more and more towards user orientation on our homepage. The information is prepared accordingly, with the aim of cooperating more closely with Internet bookshops. Image cultivation is no longer the primary online goal."
According to Carlsberg, there is also another focus: "When we think in terms of e-commerce, the publishing profiles need to be more precisely delineated against each other." Droemer Weltbild sees itself as a classic content provider, making content available via its books. For Carlsberg, the e-book is competition for the book in that it is a formative factor in the media socialization of young people. For example, he emphasizes that the book, with its tactile feel and sensuality, is no longer as experiential for this generation. "It would be naïve to simply explain this away."
The Internet experiment by the American creepy star author Stephen King was also discussed at Scherz Verlag in Bern. Thomas Reisch, assistant to the management, puts the fear of the Web into perspective: "Demand has waned. For example, King's second story, which he put on the Web, sold worse than the first. There were problems with the reading public as a result."
From the first book by Frederick Reuss ("There is no streetcar in Oblivion") Scherz Verlag has bought the German license. The third book by this author is now only offered as an e-book by his American publisher. Frederick Reuss is very close to Scherz's heart, and the question of whether the success of the
e-books is yet to be seen.
But German publishers have long since been outrunning the trend. Amazon.com opened its first e-book store in November and, with partner Microsoft (reader software), sells books that are no longer printed at all, or books whose content is prepared for e-books that can also be loaded onto Palm Pilots. It was not least the good experience with Stephen King that prompted the leading Internet retailer to invest in this business; after all, Amazon. com billed King for the revenue from the sale of "The Plant.
Amazon.de CEO Philipp Humm is convinced that every tenth book will already be sold via the Internet this year, which roughly corresponds to a sales volume of around DM 500 million. And Amazon.de holds a 47 percent share of that market, according to figures from the Society for Consumer Research.
Book on demand is only slowly beginning to gain acceptance
The publishing house Klett-Cotta offers so-called literary fantasy. Klett author J. R. R. Tolkien is the most famous example. With a specific homepage for the author Tad William ("Otherland"), the publisher has managed to maintain interest in the publication of over four volumes. In addition, according to publisher Michael Klett, chat forums have formed in which lively discussions have taken place. Whether the same number of books would have been sold without the Internet is unclear. Klett could imagine the publisher bundling on the Internet and installing a kind of large educational department store.
The Stephen King experiment has not caused concern at the Cologne publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch either, as they are not convinced of its future viability. Book on demand is more interesting for the publisher when it comes to very small print runs. Editor Helga Resch is thinking specifically of volumes of poetry that she would otherwise take out of the program.
Books on demand will increasingly dominate the Swiss book trade despite the high costs of the master files, since the Swiss Book Center also offers this service - in cooperation with the German wholesaler
Libri in Hamburg.
Kiepenheuer & Witsch is nevertheless counting on a target group of young men for the e-book. A fact that has already arrived: monthly hits on the publisher's website average around 400,000 visitors, with Germany in first place, followed by the USA, Switzerland and Austria. The publisher itself uses the Internet mainly for reading samples and for advertising purposes.
Europa Verlag, which is now domiciled in Hamburg, is managed by Vito von Eichborn. The managing director feels committed to the tradition of Zurich founder Emil Oprecht and continues the line of books on the "Third Reich". He is not particularly concerned with the King experiment because he is a brand in his own right. But he says it is interesting to note that English authors such as Fay Weldon and Frederick Forsyth are now publishing their latest books on the Internet.
Guerrilla marketing on the web for a Sepp Maier book
With regard to e-books, the CEO has no nightmares at all. Instead, he has the following thoughts: "Over 100 years ago, magazines came onto the market and achieved gigantic circulations. Publishers and booksellers cried out at the time, 'they're taking away our readers.' Then came the radio, which triggered the same uncertainty. The advent of television had a similar effect in the 1950s, and now the same thing is happening with the new media. To me, that's nonsense."
Vito von Eichborn takes the opposite approach. He is concerned with what content he can generate from the Internet and cast in book form, or how he can find employees for content on the Internet. Or how he can use the new medium as an advertising medium. Last spring, for example, von Eichborn did guerrilla marketing on the Net by employing someone to discuss Sepp Maier in chat rooms with the target group in mind. He himself doesn't know to what extent this action contributed to the better success of the book, but he thinks that such possibilities should be considered.
Martin Spieles, responsible for press and public relations at the traditional publishing house S. Fischer in Frankfurt, emphasizes that, contrary to all expectations, the Internet has so far been a support for the book. It has turned out, he says, that in these early days of e-commerce, nothing sells as well as the book. However, Martin Spieles cannot overlook the potential technological developments. "What we call the Internet today, we won't even see it that way in five years."
At the moment, book on demand is not yet a tried and tested method, even for S. Fischer Verlag. Why? The publisher, recently researched by McKinsey, sees a print run of 6,000 copies as the lowest profitability limit for a book.
The managing directors of Berlin Verlag, Arnulf Conradi and Hans Graf von der Goltz, are still skeptical about the new media, but this will change in the near future because the minority owner Bertelsmann is making great efforts to rely on the Internet as a large and important distribution channel. At Berlin Verlag, the main focus is on press relations, says Carsten Sommerfeldt, press officer.
Sommerfeldt regrets that booksellers are relying less and less on their taste. He believes that booksellers and publishers need to restructure and establish niches. It could soon be too late for that. New powerbrands are emerging not only in Switzerland, but also in Germany, as the recent merger of the Thalia and Phönix bookstore chains shows. And Internet guru Seth Godin's idea (see also page 29) that Internet booksellers like Amazon.com will become publishers themselves thanks to their large number of customers is not so far-fetched either.
The Droemer Weltbild publishing group, based in Munich, can record 75,000 "real visits" worldwide every month. Claus-Martin Carlsberg, Head of Press and Public Relations, comments: "We are moving more and more towards user orientation on our homepage. The information is prepared accordingly, with the aim of cooperating more closely with Internet bookshops. Image cultivation is no longer the primary online goal."
According to Carlsberg, there is also another focus: "When we think in terms of e-commerce, the publishing profiles need to be more precisely delineated against each other." Droemer Weltbild sees itself as a classic content provider, making content available via its books. For Carlsberg, the e-book is competition for the book in that it is a formative factor in the media socialization of young people. For example, he emphasizes that the book, with its tactile feel and sensuality, is no longer as experiential for this generation. "It would be naïve to simply explain this away."
The Internet experiment by the American creepy star author Stephen King was also discussed at Scherz Verlag in Bern. Thomas Reisch, assistant to the management, puts the fear of the Web into perspective: "Demand has waned. For example, King's second story, which he put on the Web, sold worse than the first. There were problems with the reading public as a result."
From the first book by Frederick Reuss ("There is no streetcar in Oblivion") Scherz Verlag has bought the German license. The third book by this author is now only offered as an e-book by his American publisher. Frederick Reuss is very close to Scherz's heart, and the question of whether the success of the
e-books is yet to be seen.
But German publishers have long since been outrunning the trend. Amazon.com opened its first e-book store in November and, with partner Microsoft (reader software), sells books that are no longer printed at all, or books whose content is prepared for e-books that can also be loaded onto Palm Pilots. It was not least the good experience with Stephen King that prompted the leading Internet retailer to invest in this business; after all, Amazon. com billed King for the revenue from the sale of "The Plant.
Amazon.de CEO Philipp Humm is convinced that every tenth book will already be sold via the Internet this year, which roughly corresponds to a sales volume of around DM 500 million. And Amazon.de holds a 47 percent share of that market, according to figures from the Society for Consumer Research.
Book on demand is only slowly beginning to gain acceptance
The publishing house Klett-Cotta offers so-called literary fantasy. Klett author J. R. R. Tolkien is the most famous example. With a specific homepage for the author Tad William ("Otherland"), the publisher has managed to maintain interest in the publication of over four volumes. In addition, according to publisher Michael Klett, chat forums have formed in which lively discussions have taken place. Whether the same number of books would have been sold without the Internet is unclear. Klett could imagine the publisher bundling on the Internet and installing a kind of large educational department store.
The Stephen King experiment has not caused concern at the Cologne publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch either, as they are not convinced of its future viability. Book on demand is more interesting for the publisher when it comes to very small print runs. Editor Helga Resch is thinking specifically of volumes of poetry that she would otherwise take out of the program.
Books on demand will increasingly dominate the Swiss book trade despite the high costs of the master files, since the Swiss Book Center also offers this service - in cooperation with the German wholesaler
Libri in Hamburg.
Kiepenheuer & Witsch is nevertheless counting on a target group of young men for the e-book. A fact that has already arrived: monthly hits on the publisher's website average around 400,000 visitors, with Germany in first place, followed by the USA, Switzerland and Austria. The publisher itself uses the Internet mainly for reading samples and for advertising purposes.
Europa Verlag, which is now domiciled in Hamburg, is managed by Vito von Eichborn. The managing director feels committed to the tradition of Zurich founder Emil Oprecht and continues the line of books on the "Third Reich". He is not particularly concerned with the King experiment because he is a brand in his own right. But he says it is interesting to note that English authors such as Fay Weldon and Frederick Forsyth are now publishing their latest books on the Internet.
Guerrilla marketing on the web for a Sepp Maier book
With regard to e-books, the CEO has no nightmares at all. Instead, he has the following thoughts: "Over 100 years ago, magazines came onto the market and achieved gigantic circulations. Publishers and booksellers cried out at the time, 'they're taking away our readers.' Then came the radio, which triggered the same uncertainty. The advent of television had a similar effect in the 1950s, and now the same thing is happening with the new media. To me, that's nonsense."
Vito von Eichborn takes the opposite approach. He is concerned with what content he can generate from the Internet and cast in book form, or how he can find employees for content on the Internet. Or how he can use the new medium as an advertising medium. Last spring, for example, von Eichborn did guerrilla marketing on the Net by employing someone to discuss Sepp Maier in chat rooms with the target group in mind. He himself doesn't know to what extent this action contributed to the better success of the book, but he thinks that such possibilities should be considered.
Martin Spieles, responsible for press and public relations at the traditional publishing house S. Fischer in Frankfurt, emphasizes that, contrary to all expectations, the Internet has so far been a support for the book. It has turned out, he says, that in these early days of e-commerce, nothing sells as well as the book. However, Martin Spieles cannot overlook the potential technological developments. "What we call the Internet today, we won't even see it that way in five years."
At the moment, book on demand is not yet a tried and tested method, even for S. Fischer Verlag. Why? The publisher, recently researched by McKinsey, sees a print run of 6,000 copies as the lowest profitability limit for a book.
The managing directors of Berlin Verlag, Arnulf Conradi and Hans Graf von der Goltz, are still skeptical about the new media, but this will change in the near future because the minority owner Bertelsmann is making great efforts to rely on the Internet as a large and important distribution channel. At Berlin Verlag, the main focus is on press relations, says Carsten Sommerfeldt, press officer.
Sommerfeldt regrets that booksellers are relying less and less on their taste. He believes that booksellers and publishers need to restructure and establish niches. It could soon be too late for that. New powerbrands are emerging not only in Switzerland, but also in Germany, as the recent merger of the Thalia and Phönix bookstore chains shows. And Internet guru Seth Godin's idea (see also page 29) that Internet booksellers like Amazon.com will become publishers themselves thanks to their large number of customers is not so far-fetched either.
