It all started with Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press in the 15th century. This disruptive invention enabled the mass production of books and it could be seen as the beginning of the book industry as we have known it for a centuries.
For a very long period of time, publishers the main channel of bringing books to market. As an author you had no other choice than licensing or assigning rights of your work, either via an agent or by yourself. Publishers then exploit these rights by producing and selling the books to retail stores and content developers.
This way of publishing books has quite some disadvantages for an author. First of all, it can take between 6 to 18 months before a book is published. In addition, the royalty rates the author is receiving are rather poor and authors only get paid a couple of times a year. Lastly, as mentioned earlier, authors lose many of their rights by licensing or assigning them to the publisher.
However, this traditional way of publishing has changed with the rise of the eBook. The increased popularity of this book format is empowered by two major technological developments. First of all, the development of better portable screens and the fact that more people carry one. Nowadays, reading an eBook from an eReader or tablet is almost as comfortable as reading a printed book. The second technological development, the Internet, has enabled us to access content at any place and at any time. Without these two technological changes, eBooks could have never competed against printed books.
These new business models focused on eBooks are delivering value to customers in three different ways. EBooks are first of all cheaper than their printed counterpart. Moreover, buying and reading eBooks at any place and at any time is very convenient for the customer. Lastly, as these online stores are not limited by shelf space, they have huge variety of content.
The same value proposition goes for audiobooks. This development is also powered by the increased accessibility of content, which allows customers to stream content to their devices. Companies like audiobooks.com also form a threat to the traditional publishers, as people have less time nowadays they also tend to read less. Audiobooks are therefore a good substitution.
In the coming years, we don’t think that the traditional business model will disappear on short notice. EBooks are still unable to fully substitute the look and feel of printed books. We do think however that eBooks and Audiobooks will become the primary engine of the book industry. We expect that successful eBooks and Audiobooks will still get a traditional book deal with legacy publishers.
Team 22
Mathijs Gast
Luca van de Meerendonk
Daniël Rustenburg
Aimé Wijffels
