Presentation given by Terry O'Brien at IIUG Institute of Technology, Tralee, Ireland. June 29th , 2011

1. eBooks – tipping points and milestones Terry O’Brien, Deputy Librarian, WIT Libraries. IIUG Tralee June 2011

2. “Without a doubt, the eBook is practically the biggest thing that’s hit the publishing industry since the invention of movable type”(Philip Ruppel, CEO McGraw-Hill, 2011) “inexorable rise of the eBook” (CIBER, UCL)

4. Increased fees Huge library cuts More for less Library supplier consolidation Reach of Amazon, Apple, Google The iPad and the App The Cloud Retail damage Context

6. 10m digital album sales this year already iPad sold 3m units in first 80 days Netflix 23.6m subscribers Q1 2011 – DVD sales down 20% Downloading, subscription etc. up 33% Rise in social media, streaming services Access not ownership Kindle, Sony Reader and Nook can now all borrow from libraries Digital content surge

7. “Device that will change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish” (2008) eReaderis a game changer“paradigm shifting device” Sales of eBook and Kindle have reached a “tipping point” (Jeff Bezos, 2011)

8. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Malcolm Gladwell, Little Brown, 2000) "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point“ “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.“ “It's a book about change … a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does”

11. More ‘e’ than ‘p’

14. Mainstream but not ubiquitous More than ½ “best-selling” eBooks are free, many cost $0.99, many are erotica Library books can now be downloaded (US) 4% m-on-m increase in available titles What it means to read, new kinds of reading experiences NY Times (2010) “yes, people read but now its social” Lending clubs Suited to pure text - fiction, rather than eTextbooks, iPad might address this Amazon & Kindle

16. Kindle

17. “Kindle eco-system expansion” eReaders “increase propensity to buy books and content .. due to convenience, cost, 24/7” Kindle revenues Kindle growth (Carris & Co. Analysts, 2011)

18. Amazon does not disclose metrics Sales relates to volume not revenue Includes Kindle books not read on Kindle devices Only 30% of Amazon book sales are in eBook across all categories Even free books get a receipt on Amazon, but are no longer counted in sales figures eBooks are cheaper for the consumer Kindle figures include sales of print books where no Kindle editions are available Amazon skepticism

19. Bloomsbury Publishers “demand is for digital delivery, rendering traditional relationships irrelevant” UK figures

20. Penguin eBook revenues up 182% this year, 6% of global revenues Hachette UK eBook sales quadrupled Q1 2011 70% of digital sales were from academic and professional sales in 2010 but consumer drive has widened audiences UK Amazon store selling Kindle books at ratio 2-1 hbks since 2011 Bookseller (UK) by 2015 50% ‘parity then plateau’ UK Publishers Association - £180m in 2010 eBooks subject to VAT German market now at a tipping point UK figures – exponential growth

21. Association of American Publishers

24. ALA – ¾ public libraries offer eBooks 5% of American adults own some form of eBook reader – Pew Internet estimates this will rise to 12% this summer eBooks fastest segment of borrowed items categories New York public library – highest circulating eBook library in USA - loans up 36% Most checkouts take place on weekends eReaders download more books than book buyers buy American Library Association

25. Most popular eBooks Romance, mystery, crime most popular genres Short, quick reads, part of series, read in succession, multiple buys Amazon customers buy 3.3 times as many books after buying a Kindle Seasonal buying patterns, post holiday loading Backlist purchasing and series purchasing popular Children’s print books remain very strong Men more likely to buy tablets, women more likely to buy eReaders (Forrester Research (2011) eBook trends

26. eBook trends that may change publishing? Bundled books Social reading eBook clubs e-first publishing Free e-readers – incentivisation Open access eBooks Monetization experiments – in book advertising, sponsored links etc. Enhanced eBooks coming and will only get better The device war is nearly over The $9.99 model won’t last Publishers will remain important despite self-publishing “Contextual upsell” a business model to watch Philip Ruppel, McGraw-Hill Michael Hyatt, Thomas Nelson

27. Digital Book World Conference predict eBooks will reach parity with print in 2014 Goldman Sachs est. 13% of all book sales will be eBook format by 2015, representing over £3 billion Amazon share of eBook cake will fall by 50% over next 5 years as Google and Apple eat into market. “By 2017 eBook will be the default format for textbooks, scholarly books and reference works” Highwire Librarian survey (2009) – 50% of all acquisitions will be eBook by 2015 A mere 10% of new titles will be available in print alone by 2020 (BL) Next few years ...

28. Kindle iPad app has increased eBook sales The app - huge impact on digital literature Google Books – “reading unbound” mass digitization project British Library / Google project Apple iBooks Vertical Integration – Amazon opening a publishing division, controlling all parts of the chain eTextbooks yet to take off – delayed adoption Device convergence could shorten eReaders' lifespan Significant developments

29. “the next five years will see an explosion of the eReader textbook market, and in 10 years, the market will be driven by businesses going green in government, education, health and other sectors” Forrester Research

30. Demand drivers

32. Age and gender important Undergrads and academic staff Appeals to digital consumers who prefer bite size chunks of information (CIBER) Men greater users, business students more likely to use eBooks are not read sequentially “dipping” for ‘use’ (specific) more than ‘read’ (cover to cover) Convenience factor Confusion about formats Log analysis shows power browsing, quick usage Skimming is endemic User behaviours in academic libraries

33. eBooks – academic libraries

34. “eTextbooks flunk early test” (2011) ‘2010 survey - students not warming to eBooks’ “eBooks only an important research tool for 13% of 3,000 respondents” ‘students continue to prefer printed books to e-books’ UCL 2011 “students still refer print when it comes to using, reading, absorbing” (Roy,2009) “Why aren’t eBooks gaining more ground in academic libraries” (Slater, JWebLib, 2010) “Kindles yet to woo university users” “not knowing how or where to find big factor in lack of usage” “students .. unclear about structure and functionality of eBooks”(Berget, JAL, 2010)

36. Some possibilities - where do we fit in?

38. “A university (or an IoT ...)is just a group ofbuildings gathered around a library”Shelby FooteThank you! Terry O’Brien Deputy Librarian, WIT. www.wit.ie/library #witlibraries tpobrien@wit.ie