ECTACO JBC | Prioritizing Ebook Production: Which books should you convert first?

info by http://www.eboundcanada.org

In an ideal world, every publisher would have the resources to provide all of his or her backlist and frontlist titles in a snap, books would be clearly visibile to their target markets, readers could get the content they are searching for in the form they want it, and sales would be through the roof. But in this transitional time, ebookeBook: An electronic book (also e-book, ebook, electronic book, digital book) is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book," but e-books can and do exist without any printed equivalent. E-books are usually read on dedicated hardware devices known as e-Readers or e-book devices. Personal computers and some mobile phones can also be used to read e-books. conversion often over-stretches already stretched budgets and man-hours. Making quality ebooks, even if they are being produced out-of-house, requires an important but time-consuming QA layer, and publishers must experiment with new techniques to market their digital books. One day, ebook production will be built into your workflow from day one, your entire backlist will be available on Kobo, and print books never roll out without an e counterpart. But what about in the meantime? If you must prioritize ebook conversion, where do you start?
Recently, one of our members asked for advice about how to prioritize books for ebook conversion. He would have liked to release his fall list in e and p simultaneously, but limited resources were slowing him down. He was a little late to the ebook-game, and didn't yet have any sales information to show which of his books are most successful in digital format. Here's what we told him about the ebook market, eBOUND members' sales, and trends we see on the horizon.

Ebook readers like genre books, best-sellers, and YA

Up to now, the books that sell best as ebooks in general seem to be the books that sell best in airports. When we look at the sales trends at eBOUND bares this out. The chart below indicates our members' sales by BISAC.


In case you left your magnifying glass at home, the top three are Juvenile Nonfiction, Fiction, and History. The results are skewed by the kinds of titles we have under management. Romance novels are widely known to be top sellers in ebook format, and our membership only had three romance novels available at time of reporting, but 40 bird watching guides. Romance would likely have a much more prominent showing, if they were available in a significant way. That mystery novels represent 2.4% of our managed titles, but 20.1% of our sales, demonstrates the popularity of genre fiction for ereaders well.

Hint: think about the medium

Let's go back to our members' 40 stunning bird watching guides available in ebook format. Despite the large number of bird watching guides available, sales of these titles have been almost zero. Why? That neither ereaders, which display images relatively poorly, nor tablets, which are expensive, delicate, and heavy, are ideal tools for bird watching, may have something to do with it. But as devices change this may too...

Don't forget about ebooks during awards season

As longlists and shortlists are being announced, ebook retailers are scrambling to make sure your nominated titles are available, and rightly so. Lit geeks are scrambling to read them. When you pick up the phone to call your author with congratulations, call us too. We can make sure that your ebooks get converted and uploaded (if need be) as quickly as possible, and work with retailers to make sure your titles are displayed prominently.

Fixed-layout - you're not too late to be early!

In these early days, publishers who've made their content available quickly have been rewarded. There have been lots of rumours that ereader companies will release low-priced tablets for the Christmas season. It will be interesting to see which titles will be most popular in this format - there is little information about this yet, as up to now, iBooks has the only significant supporter of fixed-layout ebooks and we don't yet have much data to examine. As fixed-layout support increases, early adopters who make their content available quickly can benefit from a head-start when there is an expansion of affordable tablets on the market. There has been a direct correlation between new reading devices, and ebook sales spikes. Position yourself now, and you'll be at the top of the heap this holiday season.

When planning for fixed-layout ebooks, think about the sorts of books that do well as Christmas gifts, or Christmas-day downloads - children's books are a good starting point. If I got a book-focused tablet for Christmas and wanted to test it out, the first thing I would download would be a picture book for my niece, and I bet that wont be an unusual response. Also focus on titles from your list that you've seen do well for Christmas. If there are some superstar backlist titles, don't discount them in favour of front-list necessarily. People may be looking for something familiar.

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