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Black and white and read all over
The eBook stands a good chance of revolutionising the bookselling industry and the launch of the latest eBook store from academic publisher Blackwell is testament to the growing popularity of this genre. But how does this new site compare to its UK competitors, and does the current offering of eBook sites do enough to get people reading again? Elizabeth Troake takes a look.
It would be fair to say that things in the book world are far from rosy at present. On top of the recession, the sector has to compete with computer games, the internet, anything that has an apple on it and, according to high profile bods in the know like Apple's boss Steve Jobs, a public that doesn't want to read any more.
However, there is growing success, as in other markets, in the industry's e-commerce divisions. Waterstone's, for example, saw sales through its website rise 60% in the last financial year thanks largely to the growing popularity of the eBook and the eBook Reader, an electronic device like a sort-of MP3 player for books upon which a lot of hope is being placed.
Popular mainly in the US, every major UK bookseller now has an eBook category within its larger ecommerce site these days, desperate not to be left off the bandwagon when the trend takes off in a big way. In the meantime, with no real overheads to speak of it is certainly worth retailers creating a catalogue of titles to cash in on the early demand.
The recent launch of academic bookseller Blackwell's eBook store is another example of which way the winds of change are blowing.
In general, Blackwell's new site stands up well to its competitors in terms of content and usability. It is clear that the site seems to have an impressively wide selection of titles covering medical, law, education, political science and everything in-between.
This is largely because of the high take-up of eBooks in the academic industry, as Jessica Armishaw, head of online for Blackwell, explains: "We're excited to be able to offer our customers the ability to buy eBooks from blackwell.co.uk. Academic publishers have been quick to embrace this new technology and as such the number of academic titles available for customers is impressive and perfectly compliments our in-store and online offer.
"While the number of trade titles is growing daily we expect our eBooks sales to grow significantly over the coming months".
The Blackwell eBook store also provides a reasonable amount of information on the title in comparison to its competitors, with previous ISBNs, series titles and often a brief synopsis.
But in order to attain more information such as the contents page (especially useful on an academic title) and often a more in-depth synopsis, the user has to click through to the paper version of the book, which is a somewhat clunky process.
However, this is still more content than on the Borders eBook site for example, which contains very little information on your chosen title other than a brief synopsis, the publisher, an ISBN and a list of the other formats in which the eBook is available.
The navigation on the Blackwell site is also easier than both the Borders and Waterstone's eBook sites, which require you to navigate back to the eBook homepage in order to select a different category. Blackwell's site features a much more user-friendly list of eBook categories on the left side of the page at all times as well as a "recently viewed" list at the bottom of the page.
Blackwell is certainly no stranger to technological innovation in its sector; in 1995, www.blackwell.co.uk became the first transactional online bookstore in the UK and this month will see the launch of Blackwell's own eBook Reader, the BeBook.
Speaking prior to the launch, Kamiel Keeris, managing director for Bebook, said: "The presence of BeBook eReaders in the Blackwell stores offers exceptional visibility to the Bebook throughout the UK and marks a significant first step in the presence of the product on the consumer mass market.''
So far, so good. However, the Blackwell eBook store, like its UK competitors, falls down on originality. Yes, it is a user-friendly site with good, clear and consistent content, but like many similar sites it fails to make full use of the potential that the internet offers.
In particular, Blackwell et al don't stand up to much against sites such as Random House, a strong leader in this sector, which makes considerably more use of the web in terms of competitions, mobile phone content, blogs and twitter.
If eBooks are to save the publishing industry, then it is clear that retailers such as Borders, Waterstone's and Blackwells must follow the example of Random House and show more imagination in their ecommerce sites.
It is frustrating that so much could be done, or should be done (think about how special features and online content for DVDs have helped to shore up the film industry).
To conclude on the layout, usability and content of the Blackwell's site is therefore a simple matter - it is a fairly comprehensive list of eBooks available with all the content you would expect from a reasonable ecommerce site.
But, with book sales in free-fall, companies like this must do more to inspire and amuse a new generation of readers - and that means more than just offering books in an electronic format. It means following the lead of US sites such as Sony, which offers 700,000 titles compared to Blackwell's 45,000, each with details on the author, details of the book, editorial and customer reviews and excerpts from the selected title.
And what about the future of eBooks as a concept? Personally, I have yet to be convinced.
The eBook Reader would certainly be a fun, attractive gadget without the current prohibitive pricing in the UK - around £200 at present, on top of paying the average price of an ordinary paperback for each book you download.
And I'm not the only one - Steve Jobs, the famously tight-lipped CEO of Apple, gave an interview to the NY Times last year, critical of the eBook, and sceptical that it would ever take off.
"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore," he said. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore".
So, that settles that then. The man behind the most on-trend technology company out there says it's a dead duck, so there's obviously no future in it.
Not quite so simple, I'm afraid. Mr Jobs also denied that Apple was working on a mobile phone a few years ago. And we all know how that turned out...
Meanwhile, last month the world's largest bookstore chain, Barnes and Noble, announced that it would become the world's largest online retailer of electronic books with the launch of its eBook site BN.com.
The new site will sell 70,000 titles in electronic form, which can be read on smartphones including the iPhone and the Blackberry and a new eReader from Plastic Logis but not the Kindle from Amazon or the Sony Reader.
BN.com will eventually stock more than a million titles within a year, including 500,000 out-of-copyright books supplied by Google.
"Our digital strategy is rooted in the belief that readers should have access to the books in their digital library from any device, from anywhere, at any time" said William Lynch, president of BN.com. "We want to make eBooks simple, accessible, affordable and convenient for everyone".
So it seems that there is scope for the eBook market to expand, although its success is far from assured.
For now, however, the UK market will no doubt be watching developments across the pond with interest.
