Random House is offering 7,000 more titles in digital format

More and more books are available as e-books and that's not really big news anymore. But big publishers that significantly increase the availability of their books in digital form, or like Treehugger call them "hot for e-books", still is. Especially when it's the biggest one - Random House.

Yes, PhysOrg is reporting today that Random House, the world's largest English-language general trade book publisher, announced that it was making thousands of additional books available in digital form, including novels by John Updike and Harlan Coben, as well as several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series.

The publisher is almost doubling the books they have in electronic format - from more than 8,000 to nearly 15,000. I believe that this move is in accordance with Random House's increased e-books sales (according to their vice president for digital operations, Matt Shatz, sales have increased by triple digit percentages in 2008), as well as with their willingness to diversify their platform and provide more options to readers.

As their VP for digital operations reported much of the significant increase in e-book sales are thanks to Amazon.com’s Kindle reader. I wonder how the current economic will influence the sales of e-books in the next couple of month. My guesstimation is that we'll see very little growth with e-books sales because of the Kindle's relatively high price. Still, it's cheaper to buy an e-book than a book and therefore I think we'll still see sales growing and not decreasing.

All in all we shouldn't forget that we're still talking about a niche with market share of about 1% of the whole book sales market.

And what about the green aspect of this move? will thousands of additional books available in digital form be better the environment or not? well, e-books don’t need paper and therefore no trees are cut down which is a good thing. They don’t need transportation or physical storage and therefore no extra costs and extra footprint are required to bring the book from the publisher to the reader. Yet, other factors to be considered, especially with regards to e-book readers such as their production, materials used, energy required for the reader’s use, and how recyclable they are.

So what’s the verdict? We still don’t know as we’re lacking a full life-cycle assessment of reading e-books using kindle or other similar electronic book readers. Until we have that, we can’t really tell for sure if and to what extent e-books, including the new 7,000 Random House titles, are more environmentally-friendly in comparison to paper made books.

More links on e-books:

E-books vs. paper books - resources page on Eco-Libris website

eBooks - A Greener Choice or Not?

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Random House's CEO is apparently stepping down, but how about his green legacy?

The New York Times reported yesterday that Peter Olson, the CEO of Random House and one of the most powerful figures in American book publishing, will step down in the next few weeks, according to two executives at Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate that owns the division.

Random House is the world’s largest trade book publisher and naturally it's a big story. This story has also a green side and a very important one - how Mr. Olson's expected departure will influence Random House's paper policy that was initiated in 2006 and enjoyed his full support?

In May 2006 Random House surprised the book industry when they announced that they will raise the proportion of recycled paper used by the company to at least 30% by 2010 from about 3% at the time of the announcement. The reduction in the usage of virgin paper is expected to result in saving of more than 550,000 trees annually once Random House hits the target of the 30% level in 2010.

On Bertelsmann's website you can learn how Mr. Olson felt about the new initiative: "Random House CEO Peter Olson pegs the financial commitment involved at several million dollars. “We believe that our new paper policy is the right step at the right time,” said Olson. “And we hope that other companies who buy large volumes of paper in the marketplace will take similar measures.” "

I can't know it for sure, but this quote as well as other indications makes me feel that Mr. Olson, who runs Random House since 1998, was very supportive of this move. Another indication for that is his involvement with Random House efforts to green up their business. I learned from the 'Book Industry Environmental Trends & Climate Impacts' report that he chairs the company's green committee. This committee, according to the report, has taken more steps to address the environmental impacts of the company's operations. The company's headquarters, for example, received LEED certification.

Random House, according to the report, succeeded to meet its intermediate 2007 target of 10% recycled paper content and is now working on meeting its 2008 goal - 15%.

From the article at the NYT, I understand that Mr. Olson is leaving his position due to lower profits of Random House (operating profit declined 4.9% in 2007) that influence Bertelsmann's financial results.

It is not clear yet who will replace Mr. Olson, but my concern is that the new CEO appointed by Bertelsmann might see the company's green initiative differently - an excess expense rather than an investment that will pay off eventually both financially and strategically.

At the same time it seems that so far Random House is implementing the recycled paper policy with no major costs, so I hope that it will be taken into consideration when the new CEO will look for ideas where she or he can cut the company's expenses and I'm sure they will.

All in all, I hope that even after Mr. Olson will leave the CEO position, his green legacy at Random House will stay there permanently.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!

Reading books chapter by chapter

I read few days ago in Springwise (a great source to new interesting ideas) about a new initiative of Random House: Selling books by the chapter.

Random House explains the logic behind the new initiative: "Sometimes what you want is a slice instead of the whole pie. That's why we're offering a new reading experience-- the ability to purchase individual chapters. Imagine that! Downloading and reading exactly the part of a book that meets your needs".

The first book to be offered by them is 'Made to Stick', written by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. This book actually looks like a very interesting book. Here's the book description on its website:

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that “stick” and explain sure-fire methods for making ideas stickier, such as violating schemas, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating “curiosity gaps.”

The process is very simple - on the book's website you can find a short description of each one of the six chapters of the book and its epilogue. You can choose the chapter that's right for you and download it as an Adobe Digital Editions file for $2.99. The introduction and index are available for free with the purchase of any chapter.

If you want to purchase the paper version of the book, you can still do it for $24.95 (or the audio CD for $29.95).

I like this idea as it generates more incentives for customers to download the book (or the chapters they are interested at in this case) instead of buying the paper version.

As Springwise writes, this idea won't work for every book, as most books you want to read from page one to the last page, but it can definitely work for guide books, such as 'Made to Stick'.

Random House is already involved for almost two years in a green initiative that is aimed to increase its usage of recycled paper to 30% by 2010. I'm not sure if Random House had the goal of reducing the usage of virgin paper when they came up with their chapters initiative, but it's definitely goes a welcomed by product.

Now we should only see if this initiative will really work. I guess other publishers will wait as well before jumping into the water with similar initiatives. We'll keep you posted as always.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!