Russian e-book-selling: Low prices and flexible biz models reported
Hachette and some other big conglomerates are in a tizzy over Amazon’s $10 prices for e-books. Well, how about this unverified posting in Slashdot about the Russian e-book scene—reporting prices as low as $1?
“Let me tell you how Russian ebook market works at present… There are sites that sell books under the “blanket license” model, not dissimilar to the arrangement Google made recently…Those book sellers are actually endorsed by the authors, who directly get their cut.
“A typical price of a single book is $1-2 – depending on the size, time passed since release, and author’s wishes. New releases sometimes start at $4-5 for the first month or so, then drop down to the common price. Normally, releases appear almost immediately. You can pay with CC (either via PayPal or another provider), by SMS, by direct wire transfer, via several popular Russian “online wallet” services, by buying coupons in various shops (that sell them alongside phone cards and such), or via numerous pay terminals.
“Once purchased, the book can be re-downloaded as needed. There’s no DRM whatsoever. Format selection is: TXT, RTF, HTML, EPUB, FB2 for the common formats, LRF (for Sony readers), LIT (for MS readers), MobiPocket, RocketBook, pre-formatted PDFs with A4 and A6 page sizes (the latter is intended for any eInk reader of typical size that can render PDFs), and Java reader applet with book embedded into it that can run on any J2ME phone. Naturally, you pay for the book, not once per each format.
“You can also go for a subscription instead of purchasing books individually. There are several predefined subscription plans with varying prices, or you can design your own by playing with a few numbers…”
I’d love to hear from people on the scene, in Russia. Is the above factual? Any more details to add about the post and related comments? Here in the States, by the way, Baen is already doing many of the things that the Russians are.
Related: Earlier TeleRead items on the Russian e-book scene.
(Big thanks to @BlueTyson.)
September 17th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Pretty much correct, except for “blanket license”. All books are sold on litres.ru under license, either from the publisher or the author.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:10 am
In order to complete the picture, it would help to point out that the “non-endorsed” (i.e. pirated) scene for Russian books is very well established. There are library-like sites that anyone can get the books from, and also to add to. The business has to compete with the free – just as the iTunes store in the music world.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
yes, it’s quite correct for price policy. but the most of selling titles are under license from publishers. but there is only one big online shop – Litres. and it’s the first problem of the Russian legal ebook market: there is no competition yet. and the second one: very narrow choice – no more than 20000 titles (and the most of them are pop-fiction)