Ebooks and the Frankfurt Bookfair

Click here to read commentary on digital publishing and ebooks at the Frankfurt bookfair from Publishers Weekly.

Key points:

• The 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair is embracing the digital future in a wide range of events, panels and workshops
• An ebooks panel of industry leaders noted explosive growth in e-book revenues: e-books made up about 9% of HarperCollins' total revenue - when that number was adjusted to filter out materials not easily consumed digitally, closer to 20% of trade title revenue was now derived from e-books. 
• With print revenues flat, nearly all of the industry’s growth can be attributed to e-books, another indicator of e-books' critical role in the publishing market.
• Are e-books adding incremental growth or cannibalizing print sales? Jury is out on this so far.
• Will the industry standard of 25% of net receipts royalty would change? Some thought not, defending the rate as a fair cut.
• Would Frankfurt Bookfair survive? Did it make sense to travel half way round the world to deal and trade in digital content?  Changes are surely on the horizon, but  it was language rights, not geographic rights, that were traded, suggesting the kind of personal exchanges fostered by the rights centre had a future.
• Pace of change is impressive - at last year's fair there was no iPad and no iBookstore, and the dominant digital theme was piracy. Now e-books and digital are looked at more as an opportunity than a threat. By next year Google will have entered the fray with Google Editions.