Amazon has been
the Goliath of the e-book battleground. Booksellers, publishers, authors, and
libraries have all taken turns bemoaning the buying power and aggressive price
strategy employed by the Seattle company. But that notion may not be correct
any longer, according to Chris Rechtsteiner, blogger and publisher of the
weekly newsletter Thinking Out Loud, who suggested four months ago that
libraries were the real threat to e-book sales.
Now,
Rechtsteiner, who is also the founder and chief strategist for research firm BlueLoop
Concepts, says people simply not reading is now the biggest challenge facing booksellers,
publishers, and libraries. They’re not reading because there are so many
low-cost alternatives to capture their attention, whether accessed via television,
tablet, or smartphone.
In a recent post
for digitalbookworld.com,
he speculated that libraries have dealt with the issue of people not reading for
quite some time and have been forced to adapt more quickly. Creating programs
to lend e-books and e-readers is the sort of innovation booksellers and
publishers have not been doing with the same sense of urgency.
Booksellers and
authors are trying, but need help from publishers, according to Rechtsteiner.
“Publishers (both old and new) must step up
and provide the platforms (and rights-management frameworks) for innovation
needed by booksellers (all types of booksellers) and authors to push reading
forward,” he wrote. “If they don’t, publishers will fall by the wayside as true
innovation will be limited to a few (one?) large players investing on their own
behalf (see Amazon, Barnes & Noble + Microsoft), while authors take their
storytelling to completely new platforms that are altogether outside of the
bookselling and library frameworks.”
