© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Are E-Books Actually Destroying Traditional Publishing?

Hannelore Foerster
/
Getty Images

Conventional wisdom says e-books are destroying the traditional publishing business model. People pay less for e-books and that drives down price.

When you talk to publishers though, you realize the story's not that simple. One advantage of e-books is that they allow publishers to test different prices. With a physical book once you stamp the price on the cover, that's it. Online though, you can easily adjust the price weekly or even daily.

Little, Brown recently tried a 24-hour sale with presidential historian Robert Dallek's book on John F. Kennedy, An Unfinished Life. The result — the book launched up onto the bestseller list.

"That sparks sales, it gets people talking about it," says Terry Adams, a publisher with Little, Brown. "You've just expanded the market."

Once you get your book on that list, you can easily jack up the price again.

To hear more about how publishers are experimenting with e-books, listen to Zoe Chace's story on today's All Things Considered.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Related Content
  • Conventional wisdom says e-books are destroying the traditional publishing business model. But the story's not that simple. For one thing, flexible pricing allows publishers to hold what amount to one-day-only sales on any given title — which means more people will discover that book.
  • For the past 25 years, Chip Kidd has made a name for himself as a top book designer. His designs have helped transform books into visual icons. But in the brave new world of e-books, where covers are often shrunk to thumbnail sketches on a screen, will beautifully designed covers become a dying art?
  • It's the era of the e-reader, and book lovers are trying to get used to reading on the screen. But every now and then, a book comes along that just seems to insist on being physical. The publishers of a richly illustrated retelling of Homer's Odyssey say not all books are meant to be e-books
  • Digital books are the fastest growing area of publishing. Libraries are seeing a surge in demand for e-book titles as well, but there's a downside. Most major publishers won't allow libraries to lend their titles, while others impose restrictions or charge double or triple the print price.