[tt] NYT: Electronic Device Stirs Unease at BookExpo

[Premise Checker]

I like the idea, but it won't be until I can get most of the books I, 
personally, want at prices lower than I can get them through Bookfinder, 
that I'll invest more than, oh, $50 for the device. Well, maybe $100. They 
will be that cheap 'ere long.

Electronic Device Stirs Unease at BookExpo
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/books/02bea.html
8.6.2

By EDWARD WYATT

LOS ANGELES -- Is the electronic book approaching the tipping point?

That topic both energized and unnerved people attending BookExpo
America, the publishing and bookselling industry's annual trade
show, which ended at the convention center here on Sunday.

Much of the talk was focused on the Kindle, Amazon's electronic
reader, which has gained widespread acclaim for its ease of use.
Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, spent
much of a packed session on Friday evangelizing about the Kindle,
which he said already accounts for 6 percent of his company's unit
sales of books that are available in both paper and electronic
formats.

But excitement about the Kindle, which was introduced in November,
also worries some publishing executives, who fear Amazon's
still-growing power as a bookseller. Those executives note that
Amazon currently sells most of its Kindle books to customers for a
price well below what it pays publishers, and they anticipate that
it will not be long before Amazon begins using the Kindle's
popularity as a lever to demand that publishers cut prices.

Overall, traffic at the book fair seemed lower than in past years, a
reflecting perhaps that some editors did not make the long trip west
from Manhattan, as well as the fact that the growth in the book
business has slowed.

While authors including William Shatner, Andre Dubus III and Ty
Pennington drew big crowds of booksellers seeking autographs,
several books by little-known authors scheduled for publication were
being pushed hard by publishers. Those include two that use witches,
of a sort, as their protagonists and one whose author is in shaman
training.

One, "The Heretic's Daughter," is a novel about Martha Carrier, the
first woman to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem,
Mass. The author, Kathleen Kent, is a 10th-generation descendant of
Carrier (though not a witch herself, said Reagan Arthur, an editor
at the book's publisher, Little, Brown). Another, "The Lace Reader,"
by Brunonia Barry, is set in modern-day Salem, where the narrator
hails from a family of women who can read the future in a pattern of
lace. The novel, being published by William Morrow in July, was
previously self-published by the author.

Kira Salak, the author of the third novel, "The White Mary," draws
on her travels across Papua New Guinea for an account of a
journalist searching for a missing reporter who is thought to have
committed suicide but might still be alive. According to Sarah
Knight, an editor at Henry Holt, the author has undergone shaman
training in Peru.

Booksellers, who make up the other major group attending the
publishing convention, are also concerned that electronic books
could become more than a passing fancy for an electronically savvy
subset of customers. "It certainly does feel like a threat," said
Charles Stillwagon, the events manager at the Tattered Cover Book
Store, a large independent bookseller in Denver.

Nearly all publishers say their sales of electronic books are
growing exponentially. Carolyn K. Reidy, the chief executive of
Simon & Schuster, said its sales of electronic books will more than
double this year compared to last year, after growing 40 percent in
2007 from 2006. David Shanks, the chief executive of Penguin Group
USA, said his company sold more electronic books in the first four
months of 2008 than in all of last year.

The numbers are still small, which helps to account for the rapid
growth. Ms. Reidy said that electronic book sales last year totaled
about $1 million, a sliver of its annual sales of roughly $1
billion. During the convention, Simon & Schuster said it would
convert an additional 5,000 titles to electronic format this year,
more than doubling its number of electronic books and making
available many of the best-selling books on the company's backlist
of consistent sellers.

Electronic books have been available since 1968 and have gained
broader attention at least since 2000, when Stephen King sold
600,000 copies of "Riding the Bullet," an electronic-only thriller,
in two days. Now, however, "we're finally at the tipping point," Ms.
Reidy said.

Much of the expected growth in electronic books can be tied to the
Kindle. When Amazon introduced the product, it sold out of the
machines on the first day. The company needed months to adjust its
manufacturing capacity and supply chain to be able to keep Kindles
in stock, which Mr. Bezos said it has now accomplished.

The chief competitor to the Kindle is the Sony Reader, which has
been on the market since 2006 and has also helped boost sales of
electronic books. Some technology critics have given the early
advantage to the Kindle, however, which downloads books, daily
newspapers and magazines wirelessly; the Sony Reader downloads
content via a wired connection.

Even Mr. Bezos said he does not expect electronic books to replace
bound paper versions anytime soon. "Anything that lasts 500 years is
not easily improved upon," Mr. Bezos said. "Books are so good you
can't out-book the book."

But he also claimed that Kindle users are buying more books, not
simply exchanging one format for another. He said that after buying
a Kindle, Amazon customers purchase just as many physical books and
two and a half times as many books overall, or three electronic
books for every two physical copies.

Some publishing executives dispute that claim. "We don't see people
buying both versions," Mr. Shanks said. "I think there is almost a
one-to-one cannibalization."

But neither Amazon nor Sony will say how many of their products they
have sold, making it impossible for publishers to assess the size of
the market or for bookstore owners to evaluate the threat.

One publisher estimated that Amazon had sold roughly 10,000 Kindles,
while another estimated that as many as 50,000 electronic-book
readers of all types are in general circulation. But both
publishers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that those
figures were little more than educated guesses.

Amazon sells most Kindle books for $9.99 or less. Publishers say
that they generally sell electronic books to Amazon for the same
price as physical books, or about 45 percent to 50 percent of the
cover price. For a hardcover best seller like Scott McClellan's
"What Happened," the former press secretary's account of his years
in the Bush White House, that would mean that Amazon appears to be
selling the selling the book for about 25 percent below its cost.

(Mr. Bezos probably did not endear himself to people in the
publishing industry fearful about his company's power when, in
response to a question after his speech, he waxed enthusiastic about
how his "lottery ticket" wealth from the success of Amazon is
allowing him to invest in a project to provide commercial travel to
suborbital space.)

Electronic readers have nevertheless gained many fans in the
publishing industry. Random House and Penguin, among others, have
equipped their entire sales force with electronic-book readers,
allowing them to avoid having to lug around as many preview editions
of books. Editors at many of the larger publishing houses also use
the devices to read manuscripts submitted by agents and authors.

A big advantage of the products is that bookstores never sell out of
copies of an electronic book, something Mr. Bezos demonstrated by
downloading and reading from "What Happened," which in hardcover
format has sold out in many stores. Amazon itself expects to be
unable to ship new copies until June 21, according to its Web site.
Barnesandnoble.com says it expects the book to be available June 6.
That too makes bookstore owners nervous about the future of
electronic books. "We're always concerned with any competition," Mr.
Stillwagon, of Tattered Cover, said. "The technology has progressed,
and people are embracing it. For us, every book sale counts."