Libor Kubín How do you do business in the field of digital books and how can they be borrowed? That's what we asked Martin Lipert, the founder of eReading.cz.
You have a fresh app in the App Store. What does that mean for you?
On the one hand, we are excited because it is another piece in the puzzle of the complexity of our service, on the other hand, I can already see the costs. Between the date of submission and approval, a new version of iOS was released, making our app out-of-date at launch. So it is another baby in which we will have to continuously invest.
You have listed another custom version of the e-book reader. Isn't that a bit pointless? After all, the tablet offer is quite extensive.
A tablet is philosophically a completely different device. And we have prepared a new reader in a new coat with the support of new services. It's a natural progression to offer readers a better service year after year.
What services (bonuses) do you offer? According to my information, electronics retailers are trying to get rid of single-purpose readers in droves and offer tablets…
The demand for e-readers still exists, and I explain the fact that people are buying more tablets by saying that there are more people who want to play games, watch movies, handle e-mails than those who want to read electronically. On the other hand, most services are independent of the type of device, such as bundling a printed book with an electronic one, where the customer buys an e-book and can subsequently buy the printed version with a discount to the value of the already purchased e-book. Today, a new service is the borrowing system, which is available both in eReading.cz START 2 and 3 readers, as well as in applications for Android and iOS.
How many e-books have been sold through your portal?
The approximate total number of licenses issued for the lifetime of eReading.cz is 172 thousand.
What sells the most?
Anyone can look at the bestseller lists <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a> and there he finds the truth.
How are sales growing compared to previous years?
Year-on-year growth ranges between 80% and 120%. However, to compare with previous years would be very misleading, thanks to the then very low foundations.
[do action=”quote”]If we were to delete all pirated copies from the internet, we will do nothing else…[/do]
You have just started offering e-book lending...
Loans are a step towards the reader who wants to read the book and not own it. Let's recalculate how many books we read more than once, and if you are freed from having a permanent license, then a temporary loan is exactly for you. The main goal was to find a cheaper sales model for the customer, or CZK 1/e-book.
How many titles do you have available?
Here we must state one thing. Due to the legal provisions of publisher-author contracts, we are on the same starting brand for loans as we were 3 years ago for e-books themselves. The result is approximately a thousand titles available for borrowing, which we rate very positively.
How are e-books borrowed? Is there such a service in the world?
This service already exists in the world (especially in the United States of America), but abroad was not an inspiration for us. The e-book market in the Czech Republic shows a fundamental abnormality compared to the market in the USA, and so we launched our loans in order to try out another business model that would be functional in this market.
What do I need to have to borrow e-books?
Loans are basically the most complicated eReading.cz project. We had to secure access for a limited time, otherwise we could no longer call the whole thing loans. For this reason, borrowed books can only be read on devices to which we have software access. We divide these devices into two categories: hardware readers (START 2, START 3 Light) and software applications for Android and iOS.
What is the reason why the reader should borrow the book from you and not from the library?
First, it is probably necessary to decide on the form itself, which is currently all-determining for many readers. If he then decides to use the e-form, borrowing becomes enormously convenient. The reader can handle everything without queuing, without waiting for a free copy, both from home and Sri Lanka.
Does the rental price seem too high to you?
It's always in perspective. He who pays taxes will always think he pays too much, and he who receives them will say he does not have enough. It's about balancing creators and customers. Let's look at a simple model. In the Czech Republic, the average book circulation is currently 1 copies. If all readers of such an average book would only borrow it once for CZK 500, the total sales would be CZK 49 with VAT, approx. CZK 73 without VAT. And out of 500 you have to pay the author, translator, editor, illustrator, typewriter, distribution, etc. If everyone worked for a net wage of CZK 60 per hour, you would pay approx. 000 hours of human labor (60 hours/month is a time fund without holidays and holidays). Is it too much or too little?
I read that your readers use DRM? So how is it?
This is classic Adobe DRM. However, for most titles with DRM it doesn't have to work because we prefer social protection.
So you usually offer books without DRM. How do your books get stolen?
I try to work for paying customers and not get distracted by people who aren't worth it. And to all those who download the results of human labor from illegal repositories, I wish to experience the feeling of not being paid for their work with absolute powerlessness to do anything about it.
It is relatively easy to find the biography of Steve Jobs that you have prepared in eReading on the Internet. By estimation, you lost at least half a million crowns, which is not a little. Why don't you try to remove these copies?
If we were to delete all pirated copies from the internet, we wouldn't do anything else, and if we didn't do anything else, we wouldn't have food or rent.
Thank you for the interview.
As a Kindle owner I bought the Start 2 for Christmas, it arrived the day before yesterday. Ideas are one thing, execution is another. The factory quality of this reader is poor: the e-ink is of an old generation, the left button is less sensitive than the right, the USB cable did not work. The GUI suffers from bugs: not all fonts display Czech characters correctly, the translation suffers from holes and many items are not localized. Instructions: the mini-booklet describes the buttons, it won't work as an instruction, it's full of nonsense (it talks about the date/time menu, which doesn't exist in the OS, it writes about the "T-card" slot, which is an SD card, etc.) and it doesn't help with such basic questions such as: how to switch the keyboard from letter to number, how to put your own books in the device, etc. The declared mobi support is only partial (books aligned in mobi on a flag are displayed aligned in a block, some with a cover, others without). GUI response is incredibly slow. Etc. Functionality and design compared to Kindle about 30%, but the price 100%. I think it has no chance on the market until they realize that the market already has some standards and expectations, and not everyone wants the lowest price. If they were as good as they say, the Kindle wouldn't have such a strong position here - it's like the iPad: it's expensive, but the cheap variants can't even touch its heels in terms of functionality and design. With eReading (but also Wooky etc.) it is similar, in addition with an absurdly set price.
And despite that, we tried our best, we just had a smaller budget. But on the other hand, no one prevents you from reading books from eReading.cz on Kindle. Only for special services (such as rentals) you will have to go to someone who is able to negotiate with amazon to cooperate...