2. eBooks, the Economy, with guest Malle Vallick – Dear Bitches, Smart Authors Podcast: Jan 12 2009

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Jane: Welcome to the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast!

Smart Bitch Sarah: I’m Smart Bitch Sarah from smartbitchestrashybooks.com, and with me is Jane from dearauthor.com. We’re going to start off today by talking about the economy, because what else would romance readers be thinking about at this moment? As we record this, it is a dark and dismal economy. The stock market is more down than the villain’s magnus wiener, and no one is really buying anything. I heard an advertisement on the radio that Saks Fifth Avenue has discounted all of their furs eighty percent, because not only do we not want to wear fur, we don’t want to buy it either. But in other places I think the romance market is actually going to thrive or at least sustain itself admirably.

Jane: I did read that mass market is still selling well, and from all accounts, it’s the mass market divisions that are still meeting their budgets for the publishers. What we do, what I do think is going to happen, and we talked about this before, Sarah, is that there’s going to be less risks being taken by mass market publishers, so the, the kind of forward-thinking authors might be asked to dial it back, that publishers might look for more comfort reads, and so the economy might be robust in terms of sales of romance, but we as readers might see a decline in the variety and the risk taking that publishers are going to be putting out there.

Sarah: I completely agree with you, and it does make me sad, because there are a lot of subgenres that are attracting more readers, such as romantic suspense, and paranormal is just such a huge element, but I have to confess myself personally to being a little, I’m a little monster-ed out. I’m a, I’m a little over vampires, and I’m a little, you know, hesitant for, you know, zombie love triangles; that’s not necessarily my cup of tea right now. But at this point, I also think that the emerging e-book market is going to help save the, the economic status of the romance genre, just because once an individual makes that investment in the e-book reader, they’re more inclined, I think, to put stuff on it. It’s a little more friendly and easier. It’s almost like not spending money. You know how you go on the computer and you click, click, click, and you spend thirty dollars, and you don’t really think about it, but if you have thirty dollars in your hands, it’s a little harder to part with your money? That digital seduction of spending is actually probably going to get a little easier for people just to load things onto their e-book readers.

Jane: I think e-book sales are one way for publishers to address their current economic problems because it’s a lower cost way of producing and distributing a book. There was a four-hundred-percent growth in e-book sales at Random House in 2008, and that’s one of the reasons that Random House is working so hard to get over fifteen thousand of their titles in ’09 in e-, in digital format. So e-books make sense for publishing, and it makes sense for readers, and a lot of romance readers already read e-books, and we know that because over fifty percent of e-books sold are romance books.

Sarah: In future podcasts, we’re going to talk a little bit about the e-book readers that we personally use, because, unless you read our websites and know that we consider ourselves big, big, big fans of the e-book. I have a Kindle, and I know Jane has a Sony reader. We both have iPhones, and we’ve tried at least four or five different methods of reading e-books, so in a future podcast we’re going to talk about the different ways to read an e-book and address some of the typical concerns that people have about that, that reading module. We’re also going to have interviews in coming episodes with different authors whose books are coming out, and generally we’re going to try to entertain each other and hopefully entertain you too.

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Jane: Next up is our interview with Malle Vallik, the Harlequin digital director. She’ll be talking with us about digital initiatives for Harlequin and what readers should be looking for in the future.

Sarah: Hi, Malle. I’m so, so excited to talk to you, you have no idea.

Malle Vallik: I’m thrilled to be here to share all things bright and beautiful that are digital.

Sarah: Let’s talk about Harlequin’s digital awesomeness.

Malle: Well, Harlequin publishes everything we do, one hundred percent front list, in e-book formats.

Sarah: Would you like me to genuflect and sing your praises now, or should I do that later, because I have to say, it’s interesting that Harlequin often is the one that’s the most beat up in the media, because – I don’t know why people say Harlequin bodice rippers, ‘cause that’s just so dumb, but Harlequin gets it on the chin every time somebody wants to bash romance, and yet here Harlequin is, one of the frontrunners in taking advantage of new technology, and other publishers could learn so much from you. Do you ever, like, want to, you know, discuss that with people?

Malle: Well, we have a moment occasionally, I will have to admit that. However, sometimes, you know, being ignored is, is also really good, and really, we have to give credit to our readers, because that’s the reason we’re doing all of this. We, we went into e-books perhaps a little bit later than some other publishers. We really went to it in 2005, mostly because a lot of, we were looking at things, this looks like an interesting opportunity. The market looks like it might be about ready to have some really good devices to read from, but also a lot of retailers told us that romance was the really big winning category, to everybody’s surprise. Not so much to ours, because our readers are so, so voracious, and this is a reading experience. So we went in with an experiment of nine titles a month in, I think, October of 2005, and in less than two years, one, one month less than two years, we were looking at 120+ titles a month. So that was just purely being, our readers are buying the books, so we might as well do more.

Jane: So it sounds like financially it’s made a, it’s been a good decision for Harlequin, else you wouldn’t have gone from nine to a hundred in two years.

Malle: Yeah. I mean, I always like to stress this is very much a growth business and we’re investing a fair bit into it, but we definitely see the potential, and particularly, once again, I think the thing that, you know, we all talked about is romance readers are incredibly avid readers. They’re really, really passionate about the books, the characters, the authors. Whether the fact that it’s in, in print on a piece of paper that you can smell or whether it’s digital and you can just get the story right away and read it doesn’t really matter to them.

Sarah: Can you share with us some of the, the numbers that you’ve noticed in terms of the growth of the number of downloads, because I keep seeing these articles as the Kindle has emerged from Amazon and as, and as the Sony keeps releasing these new and improved versions, there’re all these navel-gazing columnists saying, oh, the, the e-book will never replace paper books, and, you know, this is never going to really take off, and paper’s never really going to go away, and I know a lot of people disagree with that, but I think most of the people who haven’t tried e-books can’t conceive of, of even reading one, but I know that there are a lot of people who do it. What are some of the, the statistical increases in numbers of downloads that you’ve noticed over the past few years? Does it double once a year? Does it triple? I mean, what are, what are some of the increases in readership that you’ve noticed for e-books?

Malle: Well, you, it’s, it’s very much a growth industry right now, so we’ve been getting double digits in growth, sometimes month over month over month, and every new device that’s come in that has been, I think, easier to use, whether it’s the Sony reader, whether it’s the Amazon Kindle, has definitely had an effect on the market, but we’re still talking a very, very small percentage. I mean, it seems to be around one percent of the population has something to do in North America with, with digital reading, if, if that. But I, I think really your point that most will use part of the, the look, touch, and feel experience. Like, you can act-, if you, for some reason, one of your friends walks you through the process and you actually begin to read on a device or on your computer or whatever, then you suddenly understand all the benefits. You know, that it’s instant, that you can get all this backlist, that you don’t have to store books in your house, you can carry fifty books with you in your purse; all those things then take over, and then you become an advocate. I think we’re all the, the e-book advocates here.

Sarah: I completely agree with you. Once you try it, it’s just, you can’t go back. Jane, what were you going to say?

Jane: Well, you said that, initially, that it was retailers that kind of came to you and suggested that Harlequin might be interested because of the consumer response –

Malle: Yep.

Jane: – but I know you’ve also indicated that those retailers have been surprised by the number of e-books purchased by women –

Malle: Yeah.

Jane: – specifically romance readers, and what kind of comments have you gotten from these e-tailers or retailers, and how have they responded then to the increase of female readership?

Malle: Oh, that’s a great question. You know, really, their comment was, is they’re surprised, and, you know, they couldn’t wrap their brains much further around this, ‘cause the expectation was, is that sci-fi geeks or military thrillers, basically guys and, and techno stuff, would be the ones that would first grab on, on to the whole digital concept of reading? But once we sort of saw what our, what our consumer was doing, of course it made a lot of sense because she was the most avid reader. I mean, just like in the real marketplace, forty to fifty percent of all books sold are, you know, romance! And we’re, we’re probably in a higher percentage right now in the e-book world, simply because we have such a dominant presence, but it’s, it’s always probably going to be a huge part, because women are such big readers. Now, retailers, I think the ones who have been really smart have spent some more time merchandising and learning how to talk to women with the offers that, you know, probably one of the best offers is more free books or, or sampling. Merchandising things, for example, if you actually make Harlequin a category in your story you do better, just as in the physical world we have Harlequin sections within romance; so do they. Do they spend enough time, I think, educating everybody as to how do you use a device and how you download? No. I don’t think anyone does that, and that’s one of those things that we’re going to be taking on at Harlequin next year.

Jane: What’s one thing that you wish that retailers would do in increasing readership? Or maybe, maybe conversely, what do you think that Harlequin should be doing, or publishers in general?

Malle: I really think, sort of what I was referring to in my last point a little bit is, the whole point of educating consumers about how easy it is to find digital books, read digital books, and download them onto devices and even, you know, that your, your phone will often work for this. If you walked into most mobile stores, the person selling you your mobile, your cell phone, has no idea that you can do this, so I think there’s a lot, as publishers or retailers, that we could just do to help consumers. At Harlequin, we’re planning just to create a whole bunch of videos to sort of show, like, this is how you do it on, this is how you download onto the iPhone, this is how you download it here, this is, here are your options, and here are some of the most common problems you will come across. We all need that twelve-year-old in our home to teach us about technology because we’re women and we don’t really care how it works, we just want it to work, so basically, you know, we just need to give everyone a twelve-year-old.

[Laughter]

Sarah: That’s brilliant! Now, have you noticed, just out of your, just out of my own curiosity, and if you don’t know the answer, it’s totally fine, have you noticed that women romance readers respond better to a specific type of instruction for e-book reading and downloading? Do they prefer videos? Do they prefer visual instruction, or do they prefer hands-on? Has anyone really looked at that, how readers prefer to learn?

Malle: I, I don’t think anyone’s looked at it. I certainly know it’s not the written instructions, because I can’t get through them.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Well, yeah, but I don’t think anyone can!

Malle: Exactly!

Sarah: I don’t think that’s exclusive to gender!

Malle: No, exactly. So that’s why we think video is perhaps the way, ‘cause it’s the next best thing to being in your home and walking you through it, we hope.

Sarah: That is so smart. Could you tell us then about what’s coming up with Harlequin in addition to the instruction – which is so smart – what’s coming up that you would love people to, who are listening to hear about?

Malle: Well, we’re doing a lot more enriched e-books last year. We did one last year as a test – more enriched books next year as opposed to last year. We did one as a test last year, and what we mean by enriched is adding in extra bits of information, so whether it’s a video of the author talking about it, whether it’s hyperlinks to various places or jewelry or gowns – for example, if you’re reading a historical and she puts on her pelisse and then she goes on the, the big – oh, I never remember what – the cabriole or whatever, it’s like, what exactly is the pelisse, and what exactly does that horse and carriage look like? Well, we can share that with you, so we’re pretty excited about that, and we’ll probably include some sort of, like on DVDs, a little bit of extra, like the background stuff that was cut out or some deleted scenes, so that should be lots of fun. And we’re even going to do that some of our nonfiction stuff. We have a, a nonfiction book called 113 Things To Do By 13, so I think that, that should have some kind of cool stuff. I mentioned the videos about the, how to do more things.

We’re also going to do a number more prequels to some of our bestselling authors or some of our up-and-coming authors who have trilogies. Gena Showalter did the first one last year to her Lords of the Underworld series, and that seemed to be, like, a great tease, a great introduction to get people into the series, to perhaps a new author or perhaps even e-books, so we’ll be doing that.

And we’re going to be doing a lot – Harlequin’s sixtieth anniversary, our birthday is next year, so we’re going to be doing a lot of, quite frankly, free giveaways, which we’re very excited about, just to introduce people to our entire breadth and scope of editorial. We’re going to be giving away sixteen books. They’re going to be available all kinds of places, possibly even your websites, and also at our website, harlequincelebrates.com, and they’ll be available, a few in print but mostly in all the digital formats.

Sarah: That sounds awesome!

Jane: Well, happy birthday!

Sarah: Yeah, exactly!

Malle: Thank you!

Sarah: We’ll have to bake you a cake.

Malle: Oh, that’d be great! A digital cake?

Jane: A digital one, of course.

Sarah: Well, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us this morning, and –

Malle: You’re very welcome.

Sarah: – we think you’re awesome, so please keep doing what you’re doing.

Malle: Oh, thank you so much, and, and we have so much fun at Harlequin coming up with the stuff and then seeing people respond to it is just great.

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Sarah: If you’ve got any feedback or questions for Jane or Sarah or topics to suggest, we’d love to hear from you. You can email us at [email protected]. That’s S-B for Smart Bitch, J for Jane, and podcast for podcast at gmail dot com. We’d love to hear from you if you have ideas or questions you want to ask us. We might answer them in a future podcast or answer them on our websites, but either way, give us an email; we’ll definitely read it.