The Future is Now

The Future is Now: e-books and bookselling in Australia
hosted by the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA)
by Lyn Oxley

On 31 August 2010, I attended a one day seminar held in Sydney about the impact of digitisation on traditional bookshops. Len Vlahos, keynote speaker and Chief Operating Officer of the American Booksellers Association, discussed the role and opportunities there are for American traditional retailers in the new digital market.

Background
He advised traditional booksellers did not want to go the way the music industry did while Napster was in operation. Napster, a free music download website, operated from 2003-2008 before being successfully sued by the music industry and closed down. During Napster’s five year reign, over 2,700 record stores across the USA went out of business.

Strategies Available to Bookshops
Vlahos examined strategies available to American bookshops to adjust to the digital age. These included selling children’s clothing and/or gifts alongside books and ‘bundling’ traditional books with e-book versions.

Currently Australian independent booksellers are locked out of selling e-books due to the dominance of internet heavies such as Amazon and Apple, and may need to consider partnering with publishers to develop exclusive digital opportunities. This may prove rewarding with the current push for consumers to support their local community.

Independent Booksellers are not the only ones at risk: The parent of Borders and Angus and Robertson Redgroup Retail went into voluntary administration recently.

Twenty-five franchisees have since cut ties with the parent group. Speaking on Prime 7 News on April 5, Orange-based franchisee, Ashley Brown of the newly independent Ash’s Books, blamed years of bad management.

Reasons for Selling E-books
Selling e-books is a requirement if traditional booksellers are to survive. Vlahos’ evidence has been succinctly put by Angelo Loukakis, Executive Director, Australian Society of Authors in the ASA Newsletter in October 2010.

1. Where once people looked first to newspapers and magazines, libraries and phone books for information, they now look first online.
2. The next generation of readers and consumers are already using digital content; they simply do not access information through the traditional means.
3. There is now very widespread broadband internet connectivity, with spread and capacity increasing each day.
4. Mobile access to digital content is everywhere.
5. The ePub file format has been adopted as an industry e-book standard.

Overall, the seminar was highly informative and professionally co-ordinated. Well done, ABA!

The original image in this post was created by Lyn Oxley in Illustrator and exported as a .png file. Copyright Lyn Oxley, all rights reserved. Lyn is currrently studying Cert III in Digital Media at Bathurst TAFE.