The eBook Market Has Just Begun!

“Everyone says the eBook market is done, but it’s just begun,” said Jane Friedman of Open Road Media, ” – It’s less than 5 years old!” Ms. Friedman shared her wisdom at the Book Industry Guild of NY last week. Here are some nuggets:

 

eBook Market:

  • We need to embrace the new technologies and what readers want, in what format, at what price.
  • eBooks will be over 50 percent of the U.S. trade book market by 2016.

 

Backlist:

  • Jane Friedman brought her staff to her home library of 10k books to mine the bookshelves for backlist eBook rights.
  • The backlist at publishers was being ignored. Friedman was able to grab it and monetize it.
  • “Backlist is not backlist if no one has read it.”

 

Competition:

  • “You can’t turn the Queen Elizabeth,” discussing large publishers not being nimble.
  • Independent bookstores were threatened by big, bad Barnes & Noble. Now Barnes & Noble is threatened by big, bad Amazon.
  • Digital innovation is incredible – can do promotion for ONE day!
  • “We are not competing with publishers for shelf space.”

Content:

  • “I am optimistic about publishing. If you have great content, the reader will buy it.”
  • Investors told Jane Friedman to be a tech company at Open Road Media not a content company, because there was no money in it. They were wrong.