Can E-Books Save the Indie Bookstore?
1. Before the Kobo partnership, what were your thoughts on e-readers?
Personally, I was never really interested in a dedicated e-reader because I don’t commute and don’t want another gadget besides my iPad. But I know that if I commuted each day I might feel differently. I wasn’t against them, I just never felt the personal need for one.
1a. Did friends/acquaintances hide them when you entered the room? Were they never spoken of in your presence?
Ha, no, I don’t think anyone hid their e-readers. Unless my friends have Kindles and still haven’t told me. That’s the only thing I’d be unhappy about, the fact that friends of mine gave their money to Amazon. The e-reader thing I’m fine with.
2. Kobos are all the rage in Canada, but have hitherto been relatively unknown in the States… How did this partnership come about? Has the ABA been approaching bookstores?
I can’t speak to the background of how exactly the ABA partnered with Kobo but I know that once our partnership with Google was announced as ending, the ABA apparently entertained many different options to allow indies to continue to sell e-books and I’ve heard that many stores were very vocal about wanting the ability to sell an e-reader. So Kobo just rose to the top of the list for being able to provide both, I guess.
3. How exactly do you guys make money from this?
We don’t make a heck of a lot, but if a customer chooses to create their account through our site, we get a small commission from every e-book they buy from Kobo, I think it’s 50 percent of the net profit. We make a minimal percentage on selling the e-readers as well. Better than nothing, but pretty minimal. We won’t get rich selling e-books or e-readers, at least not in the short term.
3a. And how do you see e-books as a share of your revenue model in the future (1 year, 5 years, 10 years)?
I think that the fact that indies can participate in the e-book buying market is great, but that most of our revenue will still very much be rooted in physical books. I don’t see those going anywhere, not in one year or ten years. And if they do, I probably won’t be owning bookstores anymore, that’s my assumption.