Fear of Negative Space the Intangible
&
Master’s thesis by Jaclyn Le
Advised By Prof. Birgit Mager & Prof. Philipp Heidkamp A thesis submitted to the Köln International School of Design in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Integrated Design at the Cologne University of Applied Science, Faculty of Cultural Science, 2011.
DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY This is to declare that I wrote this thesis by myself – in case of group work I marked the part of the thesis produced by me – and that I used only these quotes, sources and aids indicated in my thesis. All quotations used by me are explicitly marked.
Place, date
Signature
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my mentors for their support-- Professor Mager, who exposed me to service design and who I have learned so much from, and Professor Heidkamp, who continually provided me with encouragement through his empathy and wisdom. I would also like to wholeheartedly thank my friends Alyssa Stoisolovich, Menatalah Amed, Juliana Bach, Samara Tanaka, Sylvia Jane, Matt Alexander, David Moore, Henrik Wesemann, Eriko Nukina, Hanno MĂźhlenbach, Ashleigh West. Ann-Lee Chou and Stephanie Hardy for their invaluable support. Additionally, I would like to kindly thank Christoph Pape and Jenny Riedel from Haeberlein & Mauerer AG, representing Sony in Germany, for loaning a Sony Reader for this study.
ABSTRACT This work explores peoples’ relationships with intangible goods, using a comparison between e-books and traditional books as an example. The scope of this thesis work is specific to e-books read on e-reading devices for leisure. There is a knowledge gap in existing literature on the relationship between people and intangible goods from a design perspective. This work seeks to investigate this knowledge gap by exploring how trust can be designed into intangibles. Using the e-books case example, a service concept, E-bookTrade, is proposed based on a set of observational studies, series of interviews and surveys of adopters and non-adopters. E-bookTrade is a service concept that enables consumers to convert their physical libraries into digital libraries as a means for transferring emotional attachment from the tangible to intangible. Through this work, it was found that intangible goods and their tangible vessels are inexplicably connected; therefore emotional attachment is transferred between vessel and content. These findings, while focused on e-books, is applicable to other intangible goods. The implication of this is that designers must carefully consider tangible aspects of intangibles and services due to transfer of meaning and value.
CONTENTS Introduction 11 Background 21 Technology adoption 22 Resistance to new technology 28 Status quo of e-books 34 Attachment to material things / identity 42 Ownership 50 Trust 54 Fear 58 Explore 63 Objective & scope 64 User profiles 66 Observation / bookshelves as exhibitionism 72 Observation / hardcovers as perceived value-enhancers 76 Observation / reading 78 Surveys / sms measuring e-book perception 92 Surveys / looking at e-book adopters 100 Interviews 104 Interviews: round #1 105 Interviews: round #2 106 Stakeholders 110
Service 113 Service concept / e-booktrade 114 Discussion 126 Conclusion 128 Bibliography 130 Appendix 142
Introduction
As consumer demand shifts towards easily accessible digital goods, there have been predictions that corresponding physical goods may become increasingly irrelevant and eventually extinct. Proponents of digital media have predicted the death of print for over a decade, which has not yet come to pass. Conversely, it has taken nearly that long for digital audio formats such as MP3 to be perceived as a legitimate consumer good. As new technology is introduced, the “material landscape” undergoes change resulting in the new and the old co-existing rather than completely replacing predecessors (Diana, 2009).
“The first long playing records were pressed in 1948, cassettes were introduced in 1964, compact discs in 1982, and the MP3 format for digital audio in 1987; all formats still being actively produced and consumed” (Diana, 2009). This shift in consumer demand signifies a gradual and inexorable shift from a goods economy to a service economy. The realm of media is not an exception. For example, the book publishing landscape is evolving from “bringing physical commodities to market to offering services that deliver content in a variety of modalities based on consumer choice” (Lichtenberg, 2008). As this digital evolution has taken place relatively recently, people still naturally place more trust in products that they can hold. Digital products are often perceived as being less valuable or enduring as physically tangible items.
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This work explores and reflects on peoples’ relationships with intangible goods using a comparison between e-books and traditional books as a specific example. Literature regarding intangibles is for the most part limited to writings on intangible assets. Intangible assets, according to the International Accounting Standards, are recognized as identifiable, controllable, non-monetary resources from which future economic benefits are expected (intellectual property such as copyrights and competitive assets such as knowledge) (Deloitte, 2011). Existing literature on intangibles approaches the topic from strictly finance, marketing and management points of view. These primarily employ quantitative research methods and focus on investing in, measuring (Stone, Shipp, & Leader, 2008; Allee, 2002) and managing intangibles (Jugdev & Mathur, 2006). Studies specific to e-books primarily focus on e-books in academic environments, such as libraries (Shrimplin, et al., 2010), textbooks (Simon, 2001), and school adoption (Smith, 2008); and Digital Rights Management (Chakrabarti, 2009). Additionally academic writing on how to design trust—as of 2011, it is limited to a few conference papers and two dissertations related to online experiences (Friedman, et al., 2000), trust and technology in tangible form (Muir, 1987), trust triggers on websites (Lumsden, 2009), interface design for e-commerce (Kim, 1998), and trust and presence (Nevejan, 2007). There is a knowledge gap in existing literature on the relationship between people and intangible goods from a design perspective. This work seeks to investigate this knowledge
INTRODUCTION ďťż
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gap by exploring how trust and emotional attachment can be designed into intangibles. Using the e-books case example, a service concept is proposed based on a set of observational studies, interviews and surveys of adopters and non-adopters. These findings, while focused on e-books, is applicable to other intangible goods. Hypothesis 1: There is a fear of intangible goods that keeps people from adopting e-books. Hypothesis 2: This fear can be negated by designing trust and emotional attachment into intangibles. I expect that this fear of intangible goods in the case of e-books will be least likely to be found in digital natives, who are highly mobile, educated, and well-read. I assume that people who fit this criteria will be the most likely to be early adopters of e-book technology.
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DEFINING THE INTANGIBLE
Books, as used in this text, refer to “a written work or composi-
Negative space is normally spoken about in the context of art and design. It is used in this work to refer to the empty space around and through objects. During my time working as a volunteer art teacher for children and also as a tutoring assistant to a high school art class, I noticed that my students were naturally inclined to treat negative space as a void meant to be filled. The urge to occupy blank space appeared to be universal. To do otherwise intuitively feels wasteful and uncomfortable. Babies do it, children do it, adults do it.
tion that has been published” (HarperCollins Publishers, 2003).
The term “p-book” will refer specifically to traditional, printed, bound books to avoid confusion..
The term “e-book” will be used as defined by the International Digital Publishing Forum as “literary work in the form of a digital object, consisting of one or more standard unique identifiers, metadata, and a monographic body of content,
According to John Maeda (2006), “If given an empty space…, technolo-
intended to be published and accessed electronically”
gists would invent something to fill (Open e-book Forum, 2000). the expanse; similarly, business people would not want to pass up the potential lost opportunity. On the other hand, a designer would choose to do their best to preserve the emptiness…” As designers, we are taught that more negative space can enhance a design—it gives the illusion of luxury, allows what information is presented to breathe and more attention is paid to what does occupy the space.
INTRODUCTION
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Negative space, as used in this work, refers to the absence of physical objects, while intangibles refer to immaterial things that occupy no space and are not perceivable through the sense of touch. If a product is reduced of its physical properties, the product, in its purest form, is its content. Content can be understood in Aristotelian terms as the essence—properties, which make something what it is and not something else. In this work, content will be used to refer to something that is contained by a vessel. A substance’s essence, originally derived from the Greek phrase of to ti ên einai, which means ‘the what it was to be,’ is made up of all the attributes that are necessary for something to be (Cohen, 2009). Take for example, Ray Bradbury’s literary work, Fahrenheit 451, as the product and the story it contains being the content. While this novel might exist in different forms with or without physical manifestation, for instance, as hardback copies or electronic books released by different publishers, we recognize the content as still being the same. To be consumed, the content requires a vessel and/or a reader to access the vessel. The vessel can be understood as something that contains content, while a reader can be understood as an external device used to access and observe content. People do not make the distinction between the book as a medium and the book as content, and therein lies the problem. P-books, as literary work, were both the medium and the content— they were inseparable until recently with the introduction of
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the experience service packaging physical product the experience core benefits service TANGIBLE PRODUCT
packaging physical product
the experience
TANGIBLE EVIDENCE
core benefits
service core benefits
TANGIBLE PRODUCT TANGIBLE EVIDENCE
INTANGIBLE PRODUCT
the experience service core benefits
INTANGIBLE PRODUCT
e-books and e-readers. With this technology, a separation has been introduced between content and medium. P-books, then, additionally can be understood as a device—as being readers of literary work.
INTRODUCTION
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OUTLINE Chapter 1 provides the background of the study by delving into the topics technology diffusion, resistance to new technology, and identifies the e-book status quo. This is followed by an investigation of peoples’ hesitation towards adopting e-books by looking at material attachment, identity, ownership, trust, and fear of the intangible. Chapter 2 describes the exploration through observational studies on reading in public spaces, interviews, and surveys. Chapter 3 proposes a service concept for increasing e-book adoption and transfer of emotional attachment from physical books to e-books. Chapter 4 extracts the overall meta findings.
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CHAPTER 1
Background
TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
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According to Roger’s diffusion of technology innovations theory (2003), the stages of technology diffusion individually and generally are as follows: technology diffusion begins with knowledge, which is the phase that a consumer becomes aware of an innovation. This is followed by persuasion, which is the phase in which the consumer forms an attitude about an innovation. Afterward, the decision phase, the phase in which a consumer accepts or rejects adoption (actively by consciously deciding not to adopt or passively by not considering adoption) of an innovation, follows. In other words, at the decision stage, it is determined if they will adopt or reject a technology. If the technology is adopted, then implementation phase occurs as the user puts the technology to use. The user then evaluates if they will continue using the technology. This phase is referred to as the confirmation phase. KNOWLEDGE
PERSUASION
DECISION
IMPLEMENTATION
The persuasion phase, where consumers develop their attitudes towards e-books and p-books will be explored and the implementation phase will also be considered, as these are the phases where consumers’ perceptions of e-books are shaped. Design can be used to positively influence rate of technology diffusion particularly in these phases. Roger (1995) defines five characteristics that influence the user’s adoption or rejection of the technology: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.
BACKGROUND Technology adoption
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Relative advantage to the competition refers to perceived potential benefits offered by adopting the technology as compared to its predecessors. E-books allow users the objective advantage of convenience, accessibility, portability, flexibility and mobility by allowing them to potentially access any book anytime and anywhere without being restricted by weigh of the reading material. However the perceived advantage is more important than objective advantage as an influencer for adoption. If such objective advantages are not perceived, then the technology is not adopted. Relative advantage also includes social advantages, which are the status and prestige of utilizing a technology. E-books are at a social disadvantage to p-books for some consumers, who perceive p-books as enhancing a user’s image when displayed in a bookshelf, for example. Meanwhile e-books, which are often priced lower than p-books, hold an economic advantage. The consumer seeing e-books as having a relative advantage over p-books is essential but not enough alone to ensure e-book adoption. In addition to relative advantage, complexity, which refers to the user’s perception of how difficult it is to use the innovation, is another characteristic believed by Rogers to influence technology adoption. The perceived complexity of an innovation as determined by potential adopters as opposed to the complexity of an innovation as assessed by experts is another aspect impacting the rate of diffusion (Lancaster & Taylor,1986 cited by Slyke; Rogers, 1995). It should be noted that there is a difference between the complexity of the technology
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and the perceived complexity. This means that in the design of a technology, consideration should be taken in shaping the perception and not focused on just the technical aspects of the technology itself. There is a negative correlation between perceived complexity and rate of adoption of the technology, so the proliferation of e-reader choices and e-book file formats, which contributes to perceived complexity of adopting e-reading, negatively impacts e-book adoption. Additionally, compatibility, which refers to how the technology fits with a user’s values and experiences, is another characteristic that influences technology adoption. A technology being more familiar to a user has a positive correlation with the decision to adopt; therefore, the positioning and naming of a new technology is important in the adoption. E-readers such as the Kindle are designed to mimic the reading experience of reading with a p-book so that the new technology is compatible with the users’ existing mental model of usage. This enhances the likelihood of e-book adoption, as familiarity reduces hesitation towards adoption of technology. Observability, another characteristic defined by Roger (2003) as being pertinent to technology diffusion rate, is the degree that a technology is visible. When users experience repeated exposure to a new technology, they become increasingly familiar with it and are more likely to trust it. Familiarity breeds trust, which is essential in the adoption of new technology (Gefen, 2000). It was determined that observability could be further
BACKGROUND Technology adoption
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broken up into the sub-components of visibility and demonstrability (Moore & Benbasat, 1991 cited by Slyke, 2003) -- visibility as referring to the perceived visibility of the technology rather than the outputs and demonstrability meaning the perceived tangibility of the results of using the technology (Van Slyke et al., 2002). During the first wave of e-books, e-books were read primarily on personal digital assistant (PDA) devices. This did not allow the technology to take advantage of visibility considering that, on first glance, a person reading an e-book on a PDA could not be distinguished from a person using a PDA for other purposes. The recent wave of e-book adoption with the introduction of dedicated e-reading devices has contributed in the surge of e-book adoption. This surge can be attributed in part by the benefit of visibility of e-book users through the use of e-readers in public. Moreover, this means for the design of intangibles, visibility must be considered. Visibility can come in the form of touchpoints and tangible outputs. An example of using design effectively for visibility is demonstrated by the choice of Apple designers to pair Ipods with white earbuds instead of black headphones unlike other mp3 players at the time. The iconic white earbuds, which are easily recognizable, contributed to Ipod’s visibility. The rate of adoption of new technology, according to Rogers, can be sped up through trialability by offering trials. The theory of diffusion of innovation suggests that trials by peers also influence rate of diffusion vicariously in absence of a trial by the individual user themselves (Roger, 2003). Users, through
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exposure and experience with something, acquire familiarity with it. To give an example of an e-reader initiative that aimed to increase familiarity and consequently trust, the “See a Kindle in your Area� program was employed by Amazon in 2008. This program encouraged current e-reader owners to meet up with prospective buyers to answer questions and do a product demonstration of their Kindle. In conclusion, the persuasion phase will be focused on in this work, since it is the phrase in which consumers develop their attitudes toward a technology, which determines whether they adopt or reject it. The characteristics determined by Rogers--relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, observability, and trialability--- will be used throughout the text to discuss adoption of technologies.
BACKGROUND Technology adoption
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RESISTANCE TO NEW TECHNOLOGY
SUMERIAN SCRIPT. STAATLICHE MUSEEN ZU BERLIN, 1999.
3000 BC
2000 BC
C. 3500 BC SUMERIAN SCRIPT
28
1000 BC
1 AD C. 250 EARLIEST CODEX
FEAR OF NEGATIVE SPACE & THE INTANGIBLE
As e-books experience growth, resistance by non-adopters towards e-books persists; however openness towards e-books is slowly, gradually increasing as observed in semi-structured follow up interviews in 2011 after original interviews conducted in 2009 and 2010. In the following sections, a history of narratives, the status quo of e-book adoption, and reasons contributing to e-book resistance (attachment to material things, identity, ownership, and trust) are discussed. The hesitation of people towards e-books is partially due to their attachment to p-books, as it is seen as mutually exclusive. This attachment is in part due to the perception of p-books as being precious vessels of value, which is a social construct. To understand the significance of the p-book as a cultural artifact, the history and paradigm shifts leading to p-books will be discussed. Three major revolutions have occurred in the history of narratives: from oral tradition to written language, from written text to printed text, and from print to digital (Finkelstein & McCleery, 2006). With each revolutionary technology came resistance. The first script was developed by Sumerians approximately 5500 years ago (Diringer, 1953 & Gelb, 1963 cited by Ong, 2002). Writing allowed man to give ideas permanence by allowing words to be tangible– a quality that did not exist when transmitting words orally. The introduction of writing in oral cultures was met with resistance. For instance Plato’s 1971 PROJECT GUTENBURG: FIRST EBOOK DATABASE
500
2007 KINDLE RELEASED
1000 C. 1450 EARLIEST INCUNABULA (PRINTED BOOKS)
1998 ROCKET: FIRST E-READER 1935 PENGIUN: FIRST MASSMARKET PAPERBACKS
BACKGROUND Resistance to new technology
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Socrates states, “Writing is inhuman …. It is a thing, a manufactured product” (Ong, 2002). The tangibility and permanence of the written word--the fact that it could live beyond the life of the author-- was what made it seem inhuman, and yet it is the lack of permanence and tangibility that e-book non-adopters struggle with. Compare Plato’s statement to Striphas’s (2009) statement, who purports that the transformation of the written word “leaves it listless, impalpable, diffuse — the same but different, deficient.” The statement by Plato is reminiscent of Striphas’s statement much like many present-day arguments made against e-books and e-readers as being impersonal and cold as opposed to p-books, which were described in interviews conducted as emitting warmth and having a personal quality. The almost identical sentiment expressed by Striphas about e-books as Platos about the written word indicates that maybe it is not the medium that is intrinsically flawed but rather a reaction to change in the form of new, unfamiliar technology and a matter of perception, which is something that can be altered through design. Traditional, written text is comparable to a monologue in that text is unresponsive by nature; a reader cannot ask the author questions and expect to receive an immediate answer back unlike spoken word, in which a dialogue is possible. In this way, the written text is inhuman, and yet e-books offer the potential for dialogue.
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With the introduction and rise of printed books in the 15th century due to Gutenberg’s improvement of the process of creating movable iron type, the earliest printed books from 1450 - 1500, also called incunabula, looked identical to handwritten manuscripts (for example, demonstrated by the similarity between the handwritten codex Manesse and the printed Gutenberg bible in photos on the following page). “The first printers … took extreme care to produce exact imita- HANDWRITTEN CODEX MANESSE (UNIVERSITÄTSBIBLIOTHEK HEIDELBERG, 2011) tions” (Beaulieux, 1926 cited by Febvre & Martin, 1976). Some believe that the reason for this was to deceive buyers, many of which distrusted printed books (Febvre & Martin, 1976). Febvre (1976) shoots down this theory. Instead, arguing PRINTED GUTENBERG BIBLE (UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 2008) that the first printers could not have imagined printed books in any other way than the handwritten manuscripts that they had grown accustomed to. P-books appeared identical to manuscripts until there was a shift in public taste in the 16th century from religious to secular literature with the growing popularity of humanism. Similarly, current e-readers are designed to mimic the experience of reading with a p-book. For example, the proportions are similar,
BACKGROUND Resistance to new technology
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and e-book reading experience is designed to be linear much like a typical p-book. This is probably due to e-reader developers taking into consideration that designing e-readers to be similar to p-books enhances compatibility with consumers’ existing mental models of usage for reading thereby positively influencing likelihood of e-reader adoption. As with the current resistance towards e-books, people of the 16th century initially were slow to accept the idea of publishing books and preferred rather to “circulate their work in [handwritten] manuscript copies” (Briggs & Burke, 2009). Unlike publication circulation, this manuscript circulation was conducted primarily between friends and acted as a form of social bonding. Another differentiating point was that these manuscript copies were “less fixed and more malleable than printed ones” and secondly allowed writers to write freely by evading censorship (Briggs & Burke, 2009). The sharing of manuscripts, akin to the sharing of worn p-books of contemporary times, had an air of intimacy that is lacking in the sharing of e-books. In interviews, subjects unanimously agreed that p-books are deemed to be highly personal gifts whereas e-books are inversely considered to be highly impersonal. The practicality of receiving a gift certificate or an e-book copy robs it of its sentiment as a gift. So following the history of narratives, one can see that with every change, there has been resistance—and often the same arguments were set forth against adoption of the new medium
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be it with written text, p-books, or e-books. The new technologies were deemed, by its contemporaries, as being always less personal and less valuable and was met with fear and suspicion. With this in mind, the arguments made against the spread of e-books are unsurprising. With each new technology, the perception eventually gradually shifted. This is not to say that it is certain that e-books will eventually overtake p-books in the way past technologies have replaced previous technologies, but it helps contextualize the resistance towards e-books.
BACKGROUND Resistance to new technology
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STATUS QUO OF E-BOOKS
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E-books, originally distributed through diskettes and later through CD-ROM in the 1980’s, failed to take off despite predictions of an e-book revolution and inversely, the death of print. This time never came. The reasons why this revolution failed is because “Superior technology does not imply a superior product, new technology does not imply immediate public acceptance” (Boradkar, 2003). As mentioned earlier in each characteristic of technology diffusion influencers, perception of advantage reigns over actual technical advantages. To reiterate, the e-book wave of the 1980’s through PDAs lacked perceived visibility. A PDA user reading an e-book is indistinguishable to an onlooker from a PDA user who is checking their e-mails. Additionally the current surge of e-books through dedicated e-reader devices, unlike the 1980’s PDA e-book wave, take advantage of the existing mental model for reading by mimicking p-books. By doing so, e-readers take advantage of compatibility thereby reducing the threshold for e-book adoption. According to industry experts half a decade ago, the four reasons most commonly cited were: 1) the problem of unsophisticated hardware, 2) the lack of standardized formats, 3) questions of ownership, and 4) prices (Thompson, 2005). As of writing in 2011, 3 of the 4 cited reasons are becoming less and less relevant. 1) Most dedicated e-readers now employ e-Ink technology with high resolution displays as compared to the LCD screens employed by PDAs in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Additionally, the
BACKGROUND Status quo of e-books
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screens of e-readers, as opposed to PDAs of the past, are sized to take advantage of compatibility by mimicking the size and orientation of a standard p-book page size thereby creating familiarity. 2) E-Pub has become the standard among many mainstream e-readers (such as the Barnes & Noble Nook and the Sony e-readers) with exception of the current market leader, Amazon, who holds 51% of e-reader market share since the second quarter of 2011 (International Data Corporation, 2011). Kindle, the Amazon e-reader, only reads proprietary e-book formats such as Mobi and Azw. Even though e-pub format is rising as a standard for e-books, the abundance of choices of e-reader devices and varying formats, DRM, and format compatibility issues adds to the perceived complexity of e-books thereby acting as a hindrance to technology diffusion of e-books. 3) E-book technology has existed for three decades and has remained irrelevant until relatively recently when Amazon released the Kindle 3 e-reader in 2010. This was the first e-reader priced low enough to draw attention from the mass market. Prices for dedicated e-readers dropped down to a $140 price point to remain competitive with the introduction of the Ipad, a multi-functional tablet device that boasts e-reading as a feature. As of September 2011, Amazon has announced the fourth generation Kindle touch and has introduced the lowest priced ‘saver’ Kindle with advertisements at $79.
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The reasons cited by industry experts for the failure of the first wave of e-books focuses on technical aspects. In the first e-book wave, the emphasis was on technical invention. The successors of the current wave, which started in 2007 with Amazon’s release of the Kindle, will be those who look beyond technical innovation and focus on improving the design of the e-reading experience and integrated e-book store. Dozens of e-readers were released and flopped in 2010 in the span of less than a year. The reason why is because many of them were cargo cult imitations that were positioned as generic, technically superior products but lacking in quality interface, service, and interaction design. Additionally, these attempts were unsuccessful, because they lacked the name recognition that consumers rely on as indicators of trustworthiness through familiarity. When there is an over-saturated market of seemingly generic, similar products, consumers tend to go with what they trust, what they are familiar with, and what they know. As a result, the only e-readers that have survived the 2010 e-reader mass exodus are e-readers from established names including Sony, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Another commonality of e-readers that flopped is that they were devices released as orphans without services to support them. The successful e-readers do not exist in a vacuum--they are just one touchpoint of an entire e-reading experience and ecosystem.
BACKGROUND Status quo of e-books
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One need only look to Apple to see that this business model works. Apple was the first to introduce a full system for a digital music including an online marketplace paired with hardware (in the form of the iPod introduced in 2001) (Gasser et al 2004; Gasser & Beque 2005 cited by Dolata 2011). Evidence of the success of the iTunes music store/iPod offering can be seen in the numbers: Johnson et al. (2008) reports that the iPod/iTunes product/system offering accorded for nearly half of Apple’s revenue and nearly a $10 billion product. Apple dominated digital music with iTunes taking a 70 - 90% share of the market in 2007 among 500 competing digital music stores (IFPI 2008 as cited by Dolata 2011). When Ipod was released to the market, it was not the first digital music player. Rio from Diamond Multimedia and Cabo 64 introduced by Best Data released in 1998 and 2000 respectively were well-functioning, stylish, and portable (Johnson et al. 2008). Apple’s innovation was not in the technology itself but in creating a holistic business model that combined service, hardware, and software to ultimately provide an easy, fast, reliable, convenient and attractive alternative to obtaining digital music (Johnson et al. 2008).
E-book market leader Amazon (2011), reported in May 2011 that for every 100 p-books sold, 105 Kindle e-books are sold. As of June 2011, e-book revenue makes up almost a third of trade publishing market (Derrico, 2011). Heavy readers are the biggest spenders of p-books and e-books (Schnittmann, 2010). Once they are converted into e-books, their consumption of
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reading material increases exponentially. Formerly lighter readers also report a large increase in purchase of reading material and attribute it to falling back in love with reading again. These statistics, while could be “My e-reader has helped re-kindle interpreted as market penetration of my love of reading. Now I am reading e-books, should be carefully considered. as much as when I was a teenager.” What these numbers suggest is that the - Alexander (from Survey #2) consumption of e-books has greatly increased, but it is not conclusive evidence of the widespread acceptance of e-books. The statistics could also be interpreted as indication that the small group of consumers who have taken to e-books are spending more. While sales of e-books continue to grow, the growth since 2010 is attributed to existing e-book adopters shifting from occasional buyers to becoming more avid readers whereas growth prior to 2010 is attributed to new e-book adopters (6000 people per day were purchasing their first e-book) (Simba Information, 2011). Additionally, it was found that e-reader owners’ e-book purchases far exceeded how many p-books they normally purchased prior to owning an e-reader (Nielson, 2010 cited by Schittmann, 2010). E-reader sales have experienced a 167% year to year growth since the past year (International data Corporation, 2011). While e-books experienced a 169.1% growth in June 2011 from June 2010 to bring in $80.2 Million in revenue, e-books only represent 27.1% of total trade book market (Publisher’s Weekly, 2011 cited by Derrico, 2011). Studies indicate that despite growing interest in e-books and their tremendous sales growth,
BACKGROUND Status quo of e-books
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P-BOOK SHARE OF TRADE BOOK MARKET E-BOOK SHARE OF TRADE BOOK MARKET (DERRICO, 2011)
DON'T KNOW WHAT AN E-BOOK IS DON'T READ E-BOOKS READ E-BOOKS ON E-READER OR TABLET 1705 RESPONDENTS (FOASBERG, 2011)
WOULD CONSIDER BUYING E-READER WOULD NOT CONSIDER BUYING E-READER (SCHITTMANN, 2010)
YOUTH NOT ATTACHED TO P-BOOKS YOUTH ATTACHED TO P-BOOKS 2000 RESPONDENTS (BOSMAN, 2009)
young people as a whole have not taken to e-books. According to a survey of students on an American college campus, 74% of 1,705 respondents do not read e-books and 15.7% read e-books on a dedicated e-reader or tablet device (Foasberg, 2011). Nielson Bookscan (2010 cited by Schnittmann, 2010) reported that 80% of those surveyed would never consider buying a dedicated e-reading device. Similarly, another study found
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that two-thirds of 2,000 young people surveyed were resistant towards straying away from physical books (Bosman, 2009). This statistic is consistent with field research conducted for this work between 2008 - 2011 including observational studies in public waiting spaces, online surveys, and monitoring of online discussions in response to articles pertaining to e-books. To conclude, the original e-book wave in the 1980’s failed, and the recent surge in e-book popularity in 2010 and 2011 on first glance might lead one to believe that e-books have finally penetrated the market and reached acceptance. A closer look at the numbers reveals that while there has been exponential growth in sales since 2007 and Amazon among other organizations and individuals who have a stake in e-book growth would have others believing e-book hype1, e-books currently only represent about a quarter of total trade book market (Publisher’s Weekly, 2011 cited by Derrico, 2011). Implementation (short term adoption) of a technology does not equate long term adoption, as the technology must successfully pass through the final confirmation phase, when users decide to continue the use of the technology, before one can state that the technology has become adopted.
1 Increasing perceived visibility of a technology positively contributes to technology diffusion. Generating hype for a technology increases its visibility through news coverage in addition to reducing distrust through social proof.
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ATTACHMENT TO MATERIAL THINGS / IDENTITY
IDENTITY
FEAR OF NEGATIVE SPACE TRUST
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FEAR OF NEGATIVE SPACE & THE INTANGIBLE
OWNERSHIP
“With more and more of our artifacts being replaced by digital files, when do physical objects matter, and why?” (Diana, 2009) With this question comes the implicit assumption that objects are losing importance as their digital counterparts are becoming more commonplace. However, take a look at digital music and vinyl, a media that has been touted as obsolete for decades, for example: as digital music proliferates, vinyl, as an object of nostalgia and ritual, enjoys a resurgence in popularity among those who cling to the tangible in rebellion. This paradoxical rise of both digital music and vinyl illustrates that while consumers accept this digital good for its convenience, they have not lost the desire to have ownership over objects—objects, that simply for being objects, represent authenticity, high value, and permanence (McCarthy, 2010). We find value in owning things, and charm in the nuances of their imperfections.
“I just want the experience of opening it up, looking at liner notes, photos and just having it to have. Downloading music seems sterile sometimes. Makes it hard to connect with the artist.” “Something about physically owning a copy of the music brings me a certain degree of satisfaction.” -Anonymous (Katz 2010).
BACKGROUND Attachment to material things / identity
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The excerpts shown above illustrate that object fetishism exists among music as it does with literary work. Listeners have a relationship to their music which goes beyond auditory—it extends into the other senses---particularly the desire to fulfill one’s haptic sense. The physical manifestation of vinyl records allows listeners a feeling of security of ownership and to form a sense of attachment. With tangible objects, one gets a sense of ownership simply by physically having it in one’s hands and being able to exert physical control over it. Additionally, the desirable aspect of the accessibility of intangible things at little cost and no physical effort to obtain makes the appeal of finding rare tangibles such as vinyl records all the more special, alluring and pleasurable (Katz 2011; McCarthy, 2010). While digital music can be collected and hoarded as well, the ease of collecting makes them, to music aficionados, less special.
愛着
According to Maeda (2006), acknowledging the existence of “aichaku,” a Japanese term for the symbiotic, emotional attachment
one feels for an artifact for what it is rather than for what it does, can help us to design objects that people will feel for. Studies (Appadurai, 1986; Daston, 2000 cited by Engestrom, 2005) have uncovered the “inseparable relationships between the material and the social and have pointed to the trails of symbolic attachment, identity and investment that objects generate” (Engestrom, 2005).
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Intellectuals associated with post-structuralism, hermeneutics, symbolic interactionism, phenomenology and semiotics share the assumption that tangible objects “exist primarily ‘as envelopes of meaning’” (Pels, et al., 2002 cited by Engestrom, 2005). However, it was not until p-books came into production that it started to be perceived as an object which contained information as opposed to, with the manuscript and incunabula, as “a recorded utterance” (Ong, 2002). This is important to consider—the p-book as a present-day ‘sacred object’ and symbol of knowledge, and “storehouses of ideas and as perceived means to human betterment” (Striphas, 2009) is a social construct. P-books hold symbolic value and are perceived as authoritative vessels of knowledge that demonstrate the education and taste of the owner, but this transfer of positive perception from object to owner does not exist for e-books despite that they share the same content. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the publishing industry was facing great economic downturn. To get people to buy more p-books in times of the Depression, public relations expert Edward Bernay, recruited by major publishing houses at the time, started a campaign of public endorsements by respected figures, who emphasized “the importance of books to civilization” (Striphas, 2009). Architects and decorators were persuaded by Bernay to put up shelves to store ‘precious’ p-books
BACKGROUND Attachment to material things / identity
45
in his national campaign to install bookshelves in American homes in the 1930s. “Where there are bookshelves, there will be books,” exclaimed Bernay (Striphas, 2009). Housekeeping periodicals were also instrumental in fueling this national fad and practice, which according to Striphas (2009) “could be viewed as contributing to a complex social pedagogy.” Ownership and display of p-books in the home became a crucial indicator of social class and modern tastes. GOOD HOUSEKEEPING MAGAZINE (ONDIRAIDUVEAU, 2009)
Jean Baudrillard proposes that consumption is a process of identity construction through symbols that signify meaning about who a person is (Bocock, 1993); therefore consumers will strongly identify with symbols that support their idea of who they are (Chapman, 2005). Chapman (2005) agrees with Baudrillard (Bocock, 1993) that consumption is about acquiring meaning rather than objects themselves. This means that in essence, objects first signify to a person who they are, but secondly signifies this message also to others. This is how a person ‘signifies’ the ‘signs’ around them. Memory and experience are the signifiers and the commodity/object is the sign. Through this, a people subjectify and humanize the cold
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objects around them to construct meaning in their material lives. That media (technologies) are most commonly referred to in academia as being primarily tools used by people to serve needs of their users (Reeves & Nass 2003). In contrast, Chapman alludes to the belief of primitive man in the phenomenon of objects having a living soul and life (Hyperdictionary, 2003 cited by Chapman, 2005). The personification of objects is not limited to primitive man, however, as this act continues to occur. Evidence of this is seen in interviews, where subjects described p-books as if they were living: “having a past life,” “romantic,” “soulful,” and “like an old friend.” The research of Reeves and Nass (2003) supports this finding through their observation that people unwittingly treat and respond to media objects applying “rules that apply to social relationships” as if they are real people. The subjects tested interacted with computer programs on separate computers. The subjects projected human-like qualities onto the computers themselves rather than on the programs, so their findings can only be applied to the technological vessels rather than the intangible (the programs). The people did not make a distinction between the content (the program) and the vessel (the computer). This suggests that unconsciously people apply their feelings towards the content to the vessel.
BACKGROUND Attachment to material things / identity
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Debate on liveliness of digital goods (an overview on the metaphysical debate about the realness of digital objects versus material objects by taking a look at digital music as an example). New technologies have rendered music, for example, as being no longer tied to physical manifestations (Dolata, 2011). The history of the discussion of music has revolved primarily around the relationship of copies and originals (Stern, 2006). Following Plato’s theories in Republic, a copy of something is less real than the original (Keuis, 1957). Plato condemns, for example, writing and paintings, which are copies as having less essence than spoken dialogue and that which is depicted (Stern, 2006). As aligned with Plato, contemporary critics have assigned digital audio recordings to being less ‘live’ and less ‘natural’ than analogue recordings; therefore implying that digital is closer to death in character (Stern, 2006). Sterne (2006) postulates that digital recordings are as lively as their analogue counterparts when liveliness is determined based on “degree to and manner in which the recordings circulate” rather than by metaphysics. But as twentieth century writers have increasingly accepted the prevalence of digital media, the debate has shifted from being about whether copies lose essence to being about “the relative merit of one kind of copy versus another” Sterne, 2006).
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A natural part of a material object’s life is decay. Even the most durable objects experience decay—as they are used, traces of their existence manifest. Take for example a p-book. As the user book is handed down from owner to owner, traces of its history are left in the form of wear and tear—whether it is through the dog-eared pages, yellowed spine, worn edges of the cover, or through notes scribbled into the margins. “If you smell a book and it has this old smell, you know it’s been around for a long time. When you feel it, it’s so nice to hold it in your hands and to be able to feel its age,” shares an interviewee. “It’s not just your history. It’s the history of every person who had this book. Sometimes there are tiny scribbles or a dedication in the book,” described another person interviewed. These imperfections and traces are evidence of the life of the p-book that are visible to anyone who picks it up. In this way, a p-book is a living entity. E-books, in contrast, are rendered anonymous through their uniform perfection. Each E-book of a title is a perfect copy of hundreds of E-books with the same edition. After this e-book is consumed, it remains unchanged from its original state upon its production, purchase, and consumption. Physical books live until they are destroyed. The immortality of e-books persist on the condition that readers exist access them. In the absence of readers to access the content, e-books are rendered obsolete.
BACKGROUND Attachment to material things / identity
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OWNERSHIP
IDENTITY
FEAR OF NEGATIVE SPACE TRUST
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OWNERSHIP
H UC OL TO NTR ICE CO CRIF ENT ION T SA CHM LIZA A A T AT SON R PE
Ownership can come in the form of psychological ownership or legal ownership. Each will be referred to as distinct types of ownership. Psychological ownership in the context of this work refers to the feeling that something is “mine� (Pierce et al. 2003 as cited by Peck & Shu, 2009). Legal ownership refers to having the right to having possession of something. Either types of ownership leads to increased perception of value of objects (Peck & Shu, 2009). In regards to legal ownership specific to e-books, when a consumer purchases an e-book, they are purchasing a license rather than a full bundle of ownership rights. A consumer who purchases a p-book has the right of first sale, which permits them to resale their p-books. In contrast, digital goods are not included in the right of first sale, because digital goods are purchased on a limited license. At most in the case of e-books, this limited license permits the consumer, in the case of the Barnes and Noble Nook and Kindle, to lend an e-book to someone else on a limited basis. This is an attempt to attract consumers by appealing to compatibility by presenting e-books as identical to the mental model of usage as p-books. This is attempted through advertising that e-books can be loaned just as p-books are, but in reality, this loaning function is restricted to a 2 week loan period and can only be applied once in the lifetime of an e-book copy. While the lack of ability of e-book users to legitimately loan their e-books to others (enforced by DRM) is a commonly cited reason in surveys by non-adopters to explain their attitude about e-books, this attempt at addressing the complaint is superficial at best.
BACKGROUND Ownership
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The limitations set on e-books through DRM negatively effects psychological ownership of e-books, because the limitations are, in essence, restricting the amount of control that users have over their e-books. Even so, the psychological ownership of a paid e-book by the person who bought the e-book is greater than the negative effects on psychological ownership by DRM. Consumers can feel psychological ownership over something even in the absence of actual, legal ownership. Touching an object directly increases the feeling of perceived ownership and consequently increases also the perceived value as a result (Peck & Shu, 2009). For example, a consumer who touches an e-reader in a store is more willing to pay more for the e-reader than a consumer who does not have the opportunity to touch the e-reader. In absence of touch as in the case with intangibles, ownership imagery, according to Peck & Shu (2009), can positively influence perceived ownership. The ability to physically control an object also leads to increased attachment. The possibility to have greater control over one’s library through an e-reader was often brought up in interviews by e-book adopters. This feeling of ownership of the vessel of their e-books contributes to an emotional attachment that adopters have to their e-readers. When asked how they felt towards their e-reader, they used emotive words such as “love,” which occurred in 53 out of 100 surveys. E-book adopters who read e-books on computers used language suggesting more distance and limited their usage to times when there was not a preferred alternative (a readily available p-book version).
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The feeling of ownership over e-books by users interviewed was observed particularly in instances where the user paid for the e-books. When an e-book was obtained for free (through piracy or through promotional offers), most users reported that they felt more like they were borrowing the e-books rather than that they belonged to them. The monetary exchange acts to give legal ownership in the form of license over using the object, but it is the transfer of value that occurs when an exchange takes place that leads to increased perception of value of the e-books. Psychological ownership leads to an immediate increase in perception of value (Peck & Shu, 2009), but users did not have a sense of ownership over public domain e-books that they legally downloaded for free. This sense of ownership was reported in interviews for intangibles (e-books and mp3s) that were paid for. The perceived value of the object exchanged is dependent on the sacrifice made to acquire the object whereby the object absorbs the value of the sacrifice (Simmel, 1978). Through exchange, a transfer of value occurs. The exchange influences the subjective value of the specific e-book and does not apply to subjective value of all e-books. In conclusion, psychological and legal ownership, touch, and sacrifice of something can increase subjective value. Touch, control, and sacrifice are factors leading to increased feeling of ownership. While both psychological and legal ownership are considered, psychological ownership is more important within the scope of this work, since it can be influenced by design.
BACKGROUND Ownership
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TRUST
IDENTITY ITY
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TRUST
FEAR OF NEGATIVE SPACE & THE INTANGIBLE
FEAR OF NEGATIVE SPACE OWNERSHIP
There is not an agreed definition of trust, despite it being a topic of much research since the 1950’s in many disciplines including social sciences, psychology, marketing, management, and human-computer-interaction. Each discipline has developed its own concepts of trust (Corritore, et al., 2001). Even within a discipline, a lack of agreement on the definition of trust persists (Lewicki & Bunker, 1995 cited by Corritore, et al., 2003). Husted speculates that it is due to its multi-dimensional qualities (Husted, 1998 cited by Corritore, et al., 2001). Trust is a social construct that can be defined as: an expectation (Lewis & Weigert, 1985), an attitude (Simmel, 1950 cited by Lumsden, 2003), and an orientation due to its ability to influence interaction (Weber & Carter, 2003; Lewis & Weigert, 1985; Lumsden, 2003) with a component of risk (Luhmann, 1979 cited by Weber & Carter, 2003). McCord and Ratnasingam (2004) have separated trust, in the context of a relationship between a human and object, into soft (relational trust) and hard traits (technological trust) (Lumsden, 2003). Technological trust refers to belief in the reliability and security of the technical and mechanical performance of something, and relational trust refers to willingness to accept risk due to positive expectation (Lumsden, 2003). Weber & Carter (2003) and Lumsde (2003) make a distinction between trust and confidence—the difference being that confidence is externally oriented whereas trust is internally oriented and specific to interpersonal relationships. Other scholars
BACKGROUND Trust
55
(Fogg & Tseng, 1999 cited by Schneiderman, 2000; Corritore, et al., 2003; Reeves & Nass, 1996) extend the definition to include technology as objects in trust relationships. While there is an ongoing dispute within academia concerning whether the term trust or confidence more aptly describes the relationship between humans and technology, I will continue with the usage of the term trust, as opposed to confidence, due to the emotional quality observed in the adoption or rejection of e-books. Lewis and Weigert (1985) contend that there are three dimensions of trust: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. The cognitive dimension is one’s decision to trust, the emotional dimension is the power of trust to influence emotion, and the behavioral dimension is one’s behavior to trust despite uncertainty (Lumsden, 2003). Trust is an important condition for determining interaction and potentially acceptance of a technology (Corritore, et al., 2001, 2003; Friedman et al., 1999). The importance of trust in decisions to purchase a product has been identified (Lumsden, 2003; Aaker, 1996; Kotler, 2002 cited by Riegelsberger, 2005) and applies also to e-commerce (Slyke, et al., 2004). As this digital evolution has taken place relatively recently, people still naturally place more trust in products that they can hold. Studies on lack of trust in the field of social sciences have empirically proven that people find online stores less trustworthy than brick-and-mortar stores (Consumer Web Watch, 2002 cited by Riegelsberger, 2005). Riegelsberger (2005) speculates that
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while lack of trust in the Internet and new technologies may be transitory due to lack of familiarity, inherent properties of online engagement advocate trust concerns.
BACKGROUND Trust
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FEAR
IDENTITY
FEAR OF NEGATIVE SPACE TRUST
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FEAR OF NEGATIVE SPACE & THE INTANGIBLE
OWNERSHIP
Fear is a state that can be defined as negative anticipation aroused by impending future events that are perceived to be threatening. For example, fear of death is a common, universal fear. The “death of print” declaration so often uttered in discussions in the late 1980’s alongside the rise of Internet and digital media has now shifted to prophecies of the “death of the book”1 as a reaction to the rise of e-book adoption. This prediction, originally claimed by librarians and now uttered by tech pundits and bibliophiles alike, proliferate discussions of e-books. The fear of negative space in regards to intangibles has been broken down to the issues of lack of psychological ownership, lack of trust, and the connection of material things to identity formation. Fear of negative space is not limited to these issues, but most factors contributing to this can be clustered into one of these core issues. These contributing factors include the absence of emotional attachment, touch, control, sacrifice, familiarity, trialability, and visibility. The fear of e-book adoption can be seen when observing the actions of the publishing industry. For example, the switch from a wholesale pricing model to agency pricing model of major American publishing houses followed by an increase in prices of newly released e-books can be interpreted as reluc1 (Briggs & Burke, 2009; Darton, 2009; Finkelstein & McCleery, 2006; Striphas, 2009)
BACKGROUND Fear
59
tance by publishing houses towards accepting e-books. This act in addition to other subtle acts such as delaying the release of e-book versions communicates fear. There is a fear that e-book sales will cannibalize hardcover sales of new releases, which is demonstrated by publishers pricing new release e-books at only a slight reduction from hardcover prices. The fear of the intangible on the consumer side is more akin to suspicion and hesitation. Some consumers see the rise of e-books as a threat towards p-books. This reluctance towards adopting intangibles seems to be gradually changing as digital media such as mp3s have become ubiquitous. Even so, the fear of the intangible persists particularly in people, often The Bibliophile (page 70) who have a strong attachment to material goods, who perceive the coming of e-books as a sign of the downfall of p-books leading to a future of books without pages and libraries without walls. In other consumers, it is more accurately described as being a reluctance, skepticism and distrust than fear. Chapman (2005) warns that there is a danger that as the digitalization of objects becomes rampant, there is a possibility of “an immaterial world of trite engagements with anonymous objects.� This fear expressed by Chapman describes a dystopian state, while those interviewed did not explicitly describe, alludes to the unconscious fear suggested implicitly by the more vehement non-adopters in interviews. The emotional responses in interviews of adamancy about their special bond with p-books and mild disbelief with an undertone of insult at the suggestion of reading an e-book
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(“Why would I want to read on a screen?�) followed by closed body language when speaking about e-books suggest that these more vehement non-adopters feel threatened by the rise of e-books. These extreme non-adopters will be later referred to in the text as the. The Bibliophile (page 70) attachment to the p-books runs deep, as their p-books are part of their identity. These particular consumers are unlikely to ever accept e-books and thus will not be considered in the design of the e-book service. The Bibliophile (page 70) describes fear and an extreme resistance that is demonstrated in other non-adopters to a much milder degree in the form of hesitation and skepticism. In conclusion, the fear of the phasing out of tangible goods by the adoption of intangible counterparts is not new. This negative anticipation is evident in varying degrees (from distrust to outright fear) and is investigated in this work. The fear of the intangible manifests on both the publishing and also consuming side of e-books. The fear and consequent resistance on the publishing end towards e-book acceptance is an obstacle in the growth of e-book adoption. While the publishing resistance towards e-books is factor to consider when referring to e-book adoption, the scope of this work focuses on fear of the intangible from the consumer end. The fear of the intangible is explored throughout this work through efforts to understand the hesitation consumers have towards digital goods, specifically e-books, and to investigate why this hesitation exists.
BACKGROUND Fear
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CHAPTER 2
Explore
OBJECTIVE & SCOPE
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This work deals primarily with e-books read for pleasure such as novels. Academic text including textbooks will be not be covered in this work. Most existing studies on e-books are primarily focused on e-book in academic environments including adoption of e-textbooks (Smith, 2008; Simon, 2001) and library integration of e-books (Shrimplin, et al., 2010). This work concerns itself primarily with e-books that are created with the intention of being accessed on e-readers. To limit the scope of this research, tablet devices, while boasting e-reading capability, are de-emphasized in the field work as they are multifunctional devices and thus it would be potentially problematic to measure adoption of e-books based simply on ownership of a tablet. Additionally, tablet owning e-book consumers are generally more casual consumers of e-books, whereas e-reader owners are extreme users of e-books. By studying extreme users, one can uncover needs of users, since the needs of the extreme users are amplified (D.school, 2010). Forrester Research (2010) found in a survey that only 50% of tablet devices, while boasting the capability to e-read, were used to do so while 66% of those surveyed own or plan to own an e-reading device. Therefore in my observational field research, it made more sense to focus on e-readers “in the wild� as opposed to tablets, which were often found used for checking e-mail and surfing the Internet.
EXPLORE Objective & scope
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USER PROFILES
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One dimension of the findings of this work is presented in the form of user profiles of adopters and non-adopters. Clear patterns of attitudes, patterns of use, and needs could be recognized through interviews and surveys. The identification and understanding of these types was necessary in the scope of this work. The objective of creating user profiles was to synthesize, in a tangible way, the findings of data collection and was referred to aid in the creation of the service.
THE ANTI-DRM USER
AVID READER
THE BIBLOPHILE
THE OG E-BOOK USER
THE DESIGNER
LIGHT E-BOOK USER
THE GENERATION F'ER
EXPLORE User profiles
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Avid Reader
“My preference [of e-books over p-books] is circumstantial preference but not overall preference.” -Sarah (from Survey #2)
31 year old female marketing consultant. She sees reading as part of her identity. Has had a Kindle since 2 years ago and originally switched to e-books, because she feels that she has too many overfilled bookshelves at home and wants to make more space for other things. Got rid of paperback books that she does not read anymore or have any special connection to. When she receives p-books as a gift, part of her wishes it was an e-book instead. When she reads an e-book that she loves, she buys the hardcover version for her bookshelf, which she proudly displays. This bookshelf is a way for her to show others who she is. She especially loves the portability aspect of having a device for her e-books for her daily commutes. She is not price sensitive when it comes to purchasing e-books.
The Anti-DRM User
“I now boycott Amazon, because I am against DRM. I use Linux Ubuntu so I support open source.” -Ronald (from Survey #2)
36 year old female biologist. Owns a Sony Reader and mostly obtains e-books through a local library or downloads public domain books. After a year of owning the e-reader and exhausting the public domain offerings, she began purchasing e-books from independent e-book retailer websites such as Smashwords.com. The e-books must be DRM-free or will be pirated if they cannot be obtained through legal means. Sees her purchases as a form of “wallet voting.” Before owning an e-reader, she tried reading e-books on the computer but did not like it. Does not buy p-books, but would borrow them from the library if there is not an accessible e-book version.
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The OG E-book User
“I still find even e-bookstores frustratingly empty, so I still mainly use pirated ones downloaded from the internet. If there were better availability & prices were substantially cheaper, I would tend to go the paid route happily.” -Ian (from Survey #2)
53 year old male who works in IT. Owned a Palm Pilot in the 90’s and used it to read e-books. Has a fond memory of reading his first e-book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the Palm in his youth. Still has his Palm in a drawer in his home office. He keeps a to-read list and buys e-books once a week. He loves his Sony e-reader and generally is an early adopter to tech-gadgets. Bought the Sony e-reader when it was released in 2006 and does not mind paying a premium to have the state-of-the-art.
Light E-book User 45 year old male attorney. Owns a tablet and less likely to be an avid reader unlike e-reader owners. Initially bought a tablet for other reasons than for e-reading and tried reading a few e-books on it during the early honeymoon phase of owning the tablet device. Less concerned with DRM than other e-book users, more likely to purchase e-books at the price point set by the agency model than any other e-book users, and least likely to pirate e-books. Uses the Kindle App to access his e-books. Prefers reading with paperbacks or hardcover books.
EXPLORE User profiles
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THE NON-ADOPTERS:
“E-books and books are just two different worlds. You can’t compare apples with pears.” -Daniela (from Interview #1) 26 year old female PhD student in sociology. Collects old, hardcover books. Highly attached to the sensory aspects of tangible books. Loves receiving books as gifts. Highly reluctant to try e-reading and has high level of distrust towards e-readers and e-books. Sees the emergence of e-books as a threat to the existence of p-books. Is least likely of all types to change her mind about e-books.
The Bibliophile
The Designer
“I don’t read as much as I’d like ... It’s just nice to have a big library in your living room that you can refer back to.” -Sarah (from Interview #1)
24 year old male freelance graphic designer. Claims to love books but does not read as much as he claims. Does not necessarily love reading, but he loves owning p-books. Likes the idea of keeping a large library of books to show off. Highly sensitive to the paper and cover, the aesthetic, and the tactile aspect of books. Highly reluctant towards trying e-readers. Spends a lot of time on the computer for his work, so he prefers to print out all electronic reading material—including e-books. “I think I would purchase e-books, but I
Generation F’er am not sure what e-readers are capable of these days.” -Henrik (from Interview #1)
21 year old male business college student. Reads RSS news feeds on Google Reader every morning for his daily dose of news, and grew up with the Internet. Has several online social networking profiles, which he denies actively using. Claims that face-to-face interaction is more important to him, yet spends more of his
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free-time on the computer than most. Has a short attention span and claims that he would read more if he had more time. Claims also to have less attachment to material things than most people. Appreciates books given to him as gifts, which is the most likely reason for him to read outside of class besides when he needs reading material on long commutes or when traveling. Likely to pirate software and music. Interested in tablets, but does not have the income to purchase one. Not well-informed enough about e-books or e-readers to form an opinion on them. Has a smart phone. Sitting on the fence about e-books due to lack of experience with them. The Generation F’er is the user type that makes sense to target in the design of a service to increase e-book adoption. The data, as confirmed by other studies (Kindleculture, 2009), which shows young adults (18-25) have the highest potential for growth for e-books, are an untapped market and appear to be sitting on the fence about adopting e-books due to lack of exposure to e-books (as evident in the interviews). According to the surveys and interviews, the Generation F’er user type, of all the non-adopter profiles, is the least resistant towards e-book adoption and just needs a small push to persuade them to consume e-books. The push should be in the form of exposure, trials, and extra incentives. For these reasons, the consumer focus group has been narrowed down to young adults in their early twenties. This group was expected (before the research) to be the most likely to already be e-book and e-reader adopters, but this was not the case. While they are not afraid of intangibles, they are skeptical but open towards it.
EXPLORE User profiles
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OBSERVATION / BOOKSHELVES AS EXHIBITIONISM “While storage may seem like a mundane aspect of a book’s life, the fact remains that where books were housed reveals a great deal about their role in society, their accessibility to readers, and their value to owners. Between 1200 and 1400, manuscripts found their way from the vestibule of monasteries to the private libraries of [the wealthy], where they were placed next to paintings and other works of art” (Howard, 2009).
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Bookshelves play to our inner exhibitionist. They demonstrate our taste by displaying what we have read or plan to read and subtly suggest how we want others to see us.
SELECTIVE BOOKSHELF AS A DEMONSTRATION OF TASTE
CLUTTERED BOOKSHELF AS COLLECTION WITH EMPHASIS ON QUANTITY
Participants recruited through the online surveys were asked to take photos with their digital camera of their personal library or where they store their p-books at home. The purpose of this activity was to accumulate visual material for inspiration, and to get a feel for the relationship people have with their libraries. The people who eagerly submitted photos of their bookshelves can be grouped into together as individuals who see themselves as readers as part of their identity: the Avid Reader type (“Avid Reader” on page 68 and „The Bibliophile“ auf page 70). As predicted based on the literature review (page 42), bookshelves are a source of identification, evidence of intellect and status, and pride (the
MAKESHIFT BOOKSHELF AS DISPLAY / FURNITURE
EXPLORE Observation / bookshelves as exhibitionism
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quantity or in other cases, the quality of literature) particularly for this sort of reader. These assumptions were confirmed in interviews. Most of those who have been interviewed have stated that they wish to someday own a large library of books regardless of whether they actually read books. Several admittedly stated that they simply like the idea of owning books and having them on display. The bookshelf photos collected can be sorted into two main categories: A) selective bookshelves as demonstration of taste and/or bookshelves and books as furniture and B) cluttered bookshelves that emphasize quantity rather than selection. Both serve to make statements about who the bookshelf owner is.
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EXPLORE Observation / bookshelves as exhibitionism
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OBSERVATION / HARDCOVERS AS PERCEIVED VALUE-ENHANCERS
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HARDCOVER BOOKS AS A MOTIF IN IN-STORE DISPLAYS AS VALUE-ENHANCING
Worn hardcover books are a frequently reoccurring window display motif in retail stores much in the same way as described in the housekeeping periodicals in the 1930s when it became fashionable to keep books as ornamental pieces. The articles advise that the presence of p-books gives an air of respectability that extend to the owner of the books (Striphas, 2009)-- the emphasis being on the vessel of the p-book rather than concern for the quality of the content within the p-book. The use of worn p-books in store displays is meant to give credibility, sophistication, and refinement to the products that rest nearby. Something or someone need only be within close enough vicinity of p-books to show a relation to them to benefit from the value-enhancing, image-enhancing artifacts. The point being that the material vessel of the p-book, in and of itself, signifies value. This does not translate to e-books, however, which was determined in interviews and surveys.
EXPLORE Observation / hardcovers as perceived value-enhancers
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OBSERVATION / READING
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Observation was conducted with intent to gain deeper understanding of peoples’ relationships with p-books and e-books beyond what observed participants are conscious of (Hoepfl, 1997). The purpose of observing people reading was to see how people relate physically to p-books and e-readers and if there was a difference. The way one holds a book has an emotional aspect to it. When the printing press came out, people criticized mass printed books as being too impersonal and lacking sentimental value. Now the same is said about e-books. P-books were observed as a constant and as basis for comparison. In addition to photos taken during observation, photos have been collected from Flickr.com to supplement the material. The criteria for photos selected to be evaluated are: 1) must appear to be natural and not posed, 2) cannot be a stock photo, 3) must depict someone reading a p-book or e-book (e-reader, tablet or mobile phone). The photos were sorted based on: a. Vessel – p-book, e-book (e-reader, tablet, mobile device) b. Posture – closed, open, sitting, standing, laying, reclining c. Context – public, private, outdoors, indoors, waiting, relaxing Bookstores with e-readers on display and waiting areas such as airport lounges and train stations were selected as the locations for observation, because these are areas where people are most likely to be found reading in public. Readers were watched as
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Observation of reading in public spaces
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P-books
E-books Observation of reading in public spaces
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they engage with their p-book, e-reader or tablet device. The observer maintained a passive, unobtrusive presence with no interaction with participants. The reason for keeping the observer’s presence to a minimum was so that the observed participants would not be self-conscious and would behave naturally in the environment. During observation, the gender and age of the people interacting with the units, their location, their level of engagement, and body language were to be noted and photos were discreetly taken when possible. Kinesics, the study of body language, and proxemics, the study of measurable distance between people, were considerations for visual analysis. What does posture reveal about one’s sense of intimacy, preferences for privacy, and feeling of urgency or lack of? How are
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P-books in public spaces
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E-books in public spaces
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P-books
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E-books
they appropriating or re-appropriating available space? These are the questions that were considered during observation. It was also considered to take into account peoples’ level of arousal, because according to Reeves and Nass (2006), “People respond to media content using basic dimensions of emotion-valence and arousal--that they would use when responding to real life experiences.” The duration of the observations was determined on site, since the duration was dependent on frequency of spottings. The observation in bookstores in Manhattan, Irvine, and Köln yielded less results than originally expected. Customers curiously but hesitantly approached e-book displays more often when there were no other people nearby. Their hesitancy was observed in the body language by pausing before approaching the display followed often by the shifting of the eyes to assess the environment. It is assumed that they scanned the environment out of shyness. There seemed to be an eagerness and curiosity to try the e-readers but hesitation due to worry of looking foolish. When a customer would realize they were being watched, they would stop interacting with the e-reader and walk away. Interaction lasted an average of less than a minute unless approached by sales personnel. No purchases were observed. There was not a pattern of gender; however, most customers who approached the display appeared to be between early 30’s and early 40’s.
EXPLORE Observation / reading
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Figure 1.
Reading comparison e-book
Figure 2.
Reading comparison p-book
2B 2C 1B
1A
1C
2A
While the body language of e-book readers and p-book readers in public spaces appears identical on first glance, a closer look identifies subtle but revealing differences. Body language overall when clustered by environment, reading format (p-book, e-reader, tablet, and mobile device), and general stance (reclining, standing, sitting) is consistent within each individual cluster. To demonstrate the difference in body language of e-book and p-book readers, a detailed analysis will be shared. Refer to Figure 1 and Figure 2. Man in Figure 1 firmly grips the e-reader with one open-palmed hand (1A) whereas the man in Figure 2 cradles the p-book with both hands cupped (2A). The cradling of the p-book (2A) suggests a preciousness to the object being held whereas the firm open-palmed grip suggest emotional distance. The angle of the e-reader pointing at a 90
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degree angle away from the body (1C) in Figure 1 is a contrast to the 45 degree angle (2C) of the p-book in Figure 2. Man in Figure 2 holds the book significantly closer to his body than man in Figure 1. The angle of the e-reader and openness of the arms in Figure 1 (1B) gives the impression of a lack of intimacy that man in Figure 2, who forms a closed circle with his body posture, gaze, and book angle (2B). Figure 3.
Casual p-book reading seats in public
More general observations include that p-book readers frequently were found reading informally in public spaces including while sitting on the ground, sitting on steps of stairs, and sitting on ledges (Figure 3). In contrast, e-book readers were spotted rarely in public spaces sitting in places that were not designated seats (chairs, benches). This suggests a casualness and high comfort level with people reading p-books that is not found in people reading e-books. E-book readers, when reading in their homes (Figure 4), are found to be displaying this comfort in their body language as they read while lounging and reclining, but it is limited to this setting.
EXPLORE Observation / reading
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E-readers were seldom seen “in the wild” in Cologne and Berlin between 2008 - 2011, but five have been spotted in total on public transport during this time. In these isolated incidences, one appeared to be a businessman carrying a tablet, a Kindle e-reader and Financial Times newspaper. He was spotted while making a long distance commute. The remaining people spotted appeared to be in their late twenties and were alone– all spotted on the street tram in Cologne with what appeared to be newly purchased e-readers. All read their e-readers for the entire duration of their trips, only stopping to take notice that I also was carrying an e-reader. I observed a sense of camaraderie between strangers based on e-reader ownership. During my observation conducted in the airports and
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E-books
Figure 4.
Casual e-book reading while reclining in private
EXPLORE Observation / reading
89
train terminals of Manhattan, Boston, Los Angeles, Dßsseldorf and Amsterdam, I noticed slightly higher occurrence of e-readers and very high occurrence of tablets being used – most notably in the Los Angeles central station and international airports in general. This period of observation was during the holiday season of 2010 / 2011, so presumably many of the e-readers and tablets were newly received as gifts and so were more likely to be spotted during this consumerism peak. A noticeable point of differentiation was that the e-reader users attracted slightly more attention, most likely due to the novelty of the object. Almost all people spotted using e-readers were women in their mid to late twenties, who were waiting alone. It could be that e-reader owners only use their e-readers when alone to be polite. Tablet users were exclusively spotted in international airports rather than train stations and were mixed equally between men and women, and all appeared to be in their late thirties to late forties. The context-of-use appeared to be significantly different than with the e-reader and p-book users. It was not confirmed if tablet users spotted were reading e-books, surfing the web, or writing e-mails, but it appeared that most were engaging in the latter two activities based on their hand gestures. Based on body language, the tablet appeared to fall into two categories of use: as a tech-gadget plaything or as a communication tool. Tablets were used also in the company of
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others, unlike e-readers or p-books. They also appeared to be displayed and used proudly. These findings were used to create user profiles based on the three series of interviews, survey results, and online forum findings. To sum up, a study of kinesics and proxemics of readers revealed that there are subtle differences between e-book and p-book readers that convey contrasting comfort, intimacy, and attachment. P-book readers demonstrate body language suggesting closeness with the medium. E-book readers, while demonstrating similar levels of comfort within the confines of the private space of a home, reveal a more distant relationship to the medium (Refer to page 86 for in-depth analysis).
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SURVEYS / SMS MEASURING E-BOOK PERCEPTION
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Semantic differential scales were used to confirm assumptions of peoples’ underlying attitudes and perception of p-books and e-books. The scales were administered through an online survey at: http://nectar.nu/negativespace The 66 participants for the first round and 67 participants for the second round (133 participants total) of the survey were recruited through mailing lists and a microblogging website, Twitter. The first round was conducted in November 2010, and the second round was conducted in January 2011. The word pairings were picked based on attributes most commonly mentioned in informal interviews about e-books and peoples’ perception of people who use e-readers. Although seven-point scales are most common, a five-point scale will be used in this study due to limitation of the software (Al-Hindawe, 1996). A odd numbered point scale was selected so that participants have a neutral option rather than forcing them to arbitrarily pick a polar position as opposed to expressing how they really feel. It also helped identify which word pairings people struggled with, as those word pairings had a disproportionate number of “0” responses. Positive polarity was randomized on the scale to ensure that participants thoughtfully answered each word pairing without response bias. Participants were asked to mark their choices on numbered columns. The linguistic qualifiers slightly and quite, as determined by the extensive work of Charles Osgood’s
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(Heise, 1969) in semantic differentials as being of equal degrees of distance of intensity, were used in the survey. The 19 word pairings for the pilot-survey, which were derived through frequency of word occurrence in the interviews, were narrowed down to 8 word pairings for the first and second round of the survey. Word pairings deemed in the pilot study to be too ambiguous based on the overwhelmingly high occurrence of “0” responses and without consensus among responses were removed for the remainder of the first round of the survey. While the more literal word pairings were useful in the pilot for evaluating the extent of positive or negative perception of e-books and books, they were removed after the pilot. Osgood’s factor analysis of semantic scales resulted in the finding that scales could be categorized into three groups: evaluation, potency, and activity. The pairings were selected to cover each factor category to ensure that a dimensional representation of attitudes could be seen: Evaluation untrustworthy / trustworthy unreliable / reliable impersonal / personal Potency perishable / durable temporary / permanent
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Activity cold / warm sterile / animated unromantic / romantic The data collected from the Survey Round two is not representative, as most of the participants recruited were from Mobilereads.com, an e-reader and e-book community. As a result, the results are skewed due to the disproportionately high number of e-reader owners filling out the survey. However, the e-reader demographics are consistent with those reported by the Amazon Kindle forums, which state that the percentage of Kindle users breaks down as follows: Younger adults (18-34) – 22% Adults (35-54) – 38.4% Older adults (over 54) – 37.3% The results are nonetheless useful for getting a sense of how the perception of e-books differs between e-reader owners and people who have not read an e-book before, for instance. The total sample size was 133. A negative score represents a negative attitude while a higher number represents a positive attitude, and a score at zero can be interpreted as a neutral or undecided attitude.
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Figure 5.
(* < 21)
(22 - 32)
(* > 33 )
(* < 21)
(22 - 32)
(* > 33 )
E-book & e-reader Adoption by Age
TOTAL SAMPLE SIZE: 133
Throughout the fieldwork, a pattern arose of younger people (22 and under) having a strong disinterest in e-books and e-readers. My assumption was that digital natives, especially those 22 and under, grew up exposed to Internet at a young age, with shorter attention spans, and are accustomed to reading shorter lengths such as websites and blogs rather than books
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and thus are more interested in multifunctional devices but not for the sole purpose of reading. Consider also the difference in perception of e-books of surveyed 18-21 year olds versus 33+ year olds: the greater range in difference between perception of e-books and p-books is especially noticeable in that 18-21 year olds surveyed perceive e-books as significantly colder, more unromantic, and more impersonal than p-books (as compared to how 33+ year olds surveyed answered. The overall feeling towards e-books based on the survey appears to be negative.
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Figure 6.
SMS 18 - 21 year olds
SAMPLE SIZE: 35
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Figure 7.
SMS 33+ year olds
SAMPLE SIZE: 54
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SURVEYS / LOOKING AT E-BOOK ADOPTERS 1. Which device do you
6. Do you have a preference
primarily use for reading
of one over the other (e-books
e-books?
versus physical books)? If so, why?
2. What initially made you decide to get an e-reader?
7. How are you obtaining
How long have you had it?
e-books? If you still buy physical books, how are you
3. Were you reading e-books
purchasing physical books?
prior to owning an e-reader?
Please elaborate.
What kind of e-books (novels
8. How often are you purchas-
and/or academic text)? With
ing e-books? How does this
what device were you reading
compare to when you first got
the e-books?
your e-reader?
4. How do you feel about your
9. Use 2 adjectives to describe
e-reader? Please elaborate.
e-books
5. Do you still read physi-
10. Use 2 adjectives to
cal books? If so, in which
describe paperback books
circumstances would you pick reading on your e-reader over reading a physical book and vice versa?
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Next, e-reader adopters were interviewed, since they are extreme e-book users. It was a struggle to find locals in Cologne or Amsterdam with e-readers to interview, so an online survey was administered to reach these users. The objectives of the standardized, open-ended, online e-reader survey were to get a better understanding of people who have made the shift from purchasing tangible to intangible goods in the form of e-books, to find out their relationship with their e-reader, e-books and print books, how their use of e-books influences their use of p-books, if there is a pattern in e-book purchasing behavior from when an e-reader is first bought, and what the people who have made this shift from tangible to intangible reading content have in common. The online e-reader survey was administered in January 2011 in English and German to members of Mobilereads.com at: http://nectar.nu/negativespace/3 Participants were recruited through e-book forum Mobilereads, which has a high concentration of e-book users and e-reader owners. Several unstructured test interviews were conducted to help determine which questions to use in the online survey. The survey was set up like a structured interview with a set of nine open-ended questions. There were five test interviews conducted and 95 online surveys completed. While the intention was for this online survey to be qualitative, the volume of responses allowed me to be selective
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about which respondents to focus on and follow up with. The findings of this study can be found on page 66 in the format of user profiles of e-book adopters.
TOTAL SAMPLE SIZE: 95 Figure 8.
Age distribution of surveyed e-reader adopters
Figure 9.
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Gender distribution of surveyed e-reader adopters
SAMPLE SIZE: 91
Figure 11.
P-book word association by e-book adopters.
Figure 10.
E-book word association by e-book adopters.
SAMPLE SIZE: 91
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INTERVIEWS
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INTERVIEW ROUND 1
Interviews: Round #1
The pre-formulated questions were:
The format of the first round of pre-study interviews conducted in February 2010 was semi-structured with open-ended questions to probe for general, relevant views on the topic of reading, p-books, e-books, and e-readers. The objective of the interviews was to explore participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; awareness of e-books and e-readers, their relationship with p-books, look for interdependencies between literacy level and openness to e-books, and attachment to the material form of the print books.
-Do you read for leisure?
-In what format are you reading?
-Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your relationship to your p-books?
-How big is your p-book collection? Were there books that you had to leave behind when you moved?
-Imagine your library burnt down. How do you feel?
-And if you were given an e-reader as a gift with all the books you lost in the fire loaded onto it, how would you feel?
Pre-formulated
questions
were
prepared in advance to guide the interview. Otherwise, questions were formed during the interview when the interviewee mentioned something of particular interest.
-Do you purchase any digital content such as music, films, or reading material?
-Is there a reason why you have a preference for purchasing goods in tangible/ intangible format?
The open-ended style was used due to flexibility and was conducted conversationally, lasting approxi-
-What is your experience with e-books?
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mately 15-30 minutes. Interviews were audio-recorded, and no notes were taken until immediately after each interview. The interviewer focused on staying neutral and avoiding leading questions, refrained from talking too much to encourage the interviewee to talk more, and used silence and nods after interviewee pauses to encourage them to continue to speak more in-depth. The sample size was seven and included: three international business students and four international arts-in-context and media-design students. The transcripts of the interviews can be found in Appendix A of the Self Initiated Documentation.
Interviews: Round #2 The second round of interviews was conducted in November 2010. The format was similar to the first round of interviews in that it was semi-structured with open-ended questions. The differentiating points were the duration (10 minutes) and objective. The objective of this round of interviews was to confirm assumptions based on findings achieved through the pre-study interviews, surveys, and following Internet discussion forums and to provide additional material to base user profiles off of.
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INTERVIEW ROUND 2
The sample size was 6 and included international design students from the Kรถln International School of Design. The transcripts of the interviews can be found in Appendix B of the Self Initiated Documentation (Le, 2010).
The pre-formulated questions were:
Keyfindings
- Did you bring e-books with you? How
-Do you read for leisure?
-Tell me about your experience of moving internationally. Did you bring p-books with you?
are you accessing your e-books?
With the exception of a few people interviewed, most of those who -In which circumstances would you read were interviewed had cited that they e-books and in which circumstances had no exposure and very limited would you read print books? Why? knowledge of reading e-books on an e-reading device. Due to lack of first- -Could you provide 2 adjectives for hand experience with an e-reader, e-books? And 2 for print books? those who were interviewed connected e-books with reading on desktop computers, which are not optimized for e-reading. They consistently related their lack of interest in e-books to their aversion to reading for long periods of time on back-lit computer monitors. The manner in which many of the people interviewed talked about their relationship with books bordered on fetishism. The sentiments most commonly expressed by anti-e-book adopters has been romanticizing the smell of an old book and attachment to the tactile experience of turning a page.
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When interviewees were asked if given a choice between p-book or e-book, they almost always choose the former. The material quality of print books give people a sense of realness, security and ownership—qualities that they perceive to be missing in e-books. E-books were perceived by those interviewed as unreliable technology—one cannot trust that their e-books will always be there. “At least with physical books, they’re always there,” remarked an interviewee. While interviewees unanimously acknowledged that e-books were likely to be easier, more convenient, and faster to acquire than p-books, a common sentiment was that this benefit was also one of main contributors to the perception that e-books lack value. As an interviewee stated, “It was just too easy to buy books, because it’s as simple as a click for a small price. It’s like getting an expensive gift that you are not aware is expensive—you just don’t appreciate or value it as much.” If something is too easily obtainable, people attribute less value to it. The monetary expense, energy, and effort that one expends into obtaining something is indicative of its perceived value to the user.
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EXPLORE Interviews
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STAKEHOLDERS
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A stakeholder map is a visual representation of relationships and influence of stakeholders. Visualizing the connections between key stakeholders helps to inform the design of the service and identify opportunities for potential partners for the service. As demonstrated by the e-book stakeholder map (Figure 12), major publishers’ influence can be seen indirectly through their actions with book chain retailers, e-book aggregators, signed authors, e-book developers, and mom’n’pop bookstores.
SIGNED AUTHORS
EBOOK AGGREATORS MAJOR PUBLISHERS
TAXPAYERS BOOK CHAIN RETAILERS
MAJOR EBOOK DISTRIBUTERS
LIBRARIES
CONSUMERS
EBOOK DEVELOPERS
MOM’N’POP BOOKSTORES
EREADER MANUFACTURERS
SMALL EBOOK DISTRIBUTERS
EREADER RETAILERS
INDIE AUTHORS
EREADER DEVELOPERS Figure 12.
E-book stakeholder map
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CHAPTER 3
Service
SERVICE CONCEPT / E-BOOKTRADE
“Service design addresses the functionality and form of the service medium. The aim is to ensure that service interfaces are usable and useful, effective and efficient, desirable and differentiated from the provider and the persons point of view.” -Birgit Mager, 2000
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Imagine having all your favorite books on your e-reader. People are attached to their iPods and laptops (vessels) because they are attached to what is stored inside of them; the meaning and bond that they feel for the content inadvertently transfers to the vessel. In the same way, attachment and feeling of kinship transfers through these p-books to the e-book trade ins onto an e-reader. They feel ownership over their e-reader and e-books at this point, because then it becomes their library once their favorite books are on the device. Without these titles on their e-reader, it does not yet feel as if it is their library, because it is akin to a borrowed novelty object. E-bookTrade is a service concept designed to entice prospective e-book consumers to become adopters. Essentially, the service allows consumers to trade in their p-books for e-books or can redeem as credit for future e-book purchases. E-bookTrade seeks to make deciding to switch to e-books more appealing by offering a practical service that allows people to obtain a digital version of their existing physical library. This service would appeal to the Generation Fâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;er user type (page 70), who values practicality and sits on the fence in regards to e-books due to lack of exposure to them. People value something more when they have sacrificed (invested time, money and effort into) acquiring it (page 50); therefore, the service works on the premise that they have to trade in p-books for e-books rather than receiving e-book versions simply by proving p-book ownership of a title. Without
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Figure 13.
RECEIVE PACKAGE
PHYSICAL USER ACTION
DIGITAL USER ACTION
ACTIVATE SERVICE VOUCHER
ORDER E-READER
Service blueprint
LOOK THROUGH PERSONAL COLLECTION OF BOOKS TO SELECTWHICH TO TRADE
TAKE PHOTOS OF BOOK UPCS
DOWNLOAD APP
APP INFORMS OF AVAILABILITY OF EBOOK AS A TRADE & DISPLAYS HOW MUCH PAGE CREDIT EXCHANGE VALUE APPROX.
FRONT STAGE
LINE OF VISIBILITY BACK STAGE
116
PROCESS ORDER
SHIP ORDER
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MANAGE DATABASE
PR S
RINT OUT TRADE-IN ORDER SLIPS OF BOOKS YOU WANT TO TRADE
PUT SLIPS INTO THE BOOKS
GO TO UNIVERSITY DROP OFF POINT
GPS LOOK UP NEAREST DROP OFF POINT
GENERATE ORDER
BOOKS SORTED
UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE STOCKS SHELVES W/RELEVANT TEXTBOOKS & LISTS REMAINDER ONLINE FOR RESALE
E-BOOKS DOWNLOADED ONTO READER
DROP OFF BOOKS
2ND HAND BOOKSTORE EMPLOYEEE PICKS UP BOOKS
PICK WHICH ARE FOR EBOOK TRADE OR PAGES CREDIT
SPEND CREDITS TO GET DISCOUNTS ON MORE E-BOOK PURCHASES OR 2ND HAND BOOKS
CREDIT AWARDED TO USERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ACCOUNT
2ND HAND BOOKSTORE DECIDES WHICH BOOKS TO STOCK IN SHOP, WHICH TO LIST ONLINE, AND WHICH TO RECYCLE
2ND HAND BOOKSTORE EMPLOYEEE CHECKS BOOKS INTO DATABASE
SERVICE Service concept / e-booktrade
117
having to give up something of value, there can be no transfer of value (page 50). While consumers are often unwilling to repurchase e-books they already own as p-books (while exceptional consumers such as the Avid Reader user profile (page 68) actively purchases hardcover versions of e-books that they enjoy), they are open to trading in already-read p-books such as their mass-market paperbacks for saving space (as determined in survey #2) and the convenience of having an e-book version just for archival purposes. It should be mentioned that the Avid Reader type, according to interviews highly identifies with their bookshelf, so the service, if used, would be only be used for p-books that would have been thrown out either way. P-books bought specifically to be displayed would definitely not be traded in. The service should be promoted as a promotional offering that can be redeemed with a purchase of an e-reader to entice e-reader adoption. Additionally the service can be used by e-reader owners for a nominal fee. For an e-book retailer such as Amazon, this service would be appealing, because it is consistent with their lock-in business model. They lure in consumers by selling goods at a loss, which eventually leads to the profit through sales of other goods on their site to consumers. According to the theory of innovation diffusion (page 26), purchasing a technological artifact does not equate adoption or
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PARTNERSHIP
S
OK
BO
UP
CK
PI
DROP OFF BOOKS
acceptance. At this point, there is still one more phase in which the user determines if the technology is useful to them and if they will actually continue using it long term. The objective of the service is not simply to sell e-readers. Rather, the purpose of the service is long term growth in e-book adoption. E-reader users are the most DROP OFF BOOKS avid readers and thus the heaviest consumers of books 2ND HAND (both p-books and e-books), END USER BOOKSHOPS so increasing e-reader adoption also leads to an increase in e-book adoption and book sales in general. If these e-reader users make it through the final implemenPARTNERSHIP tation phase of the theory of SERVICE innovation diffusion, they UNIVERSITY PROVIDER contribute to increases in e-book sales long term. This Figure 14. System of actors service concept benefits all players who have a stake in the long-term growth of e-book acceptance. E-bookTrade would be offered as a service by an e-book retailer such as Amazon rather than work as an independent start-up. E-book retailers such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble have the infrastructure for distributing e-books and an integrated used
SERVICE Service concept / e-booktrade
119
book market. Additionally, an established e-book retailer would have the financial means to introduce such a service. This service would lose money short-term but work as an investment for long-term gain in the growth of e-book acceptance. Amazon has demonstrated through their aggressive loss-leader tactics (Appendix) that they would be an ideal candidate for offering this service. The acquired p-books through trade ins would be resold on the used-book market for additional revenue. Integral to the service is the development of partnerships with local secondhand shops and university bookstores, where the acquired p-books could also be resold. Partnered secondhand bookshops serve as the frontline for users who prefer to interact face-to-face at a brickand-mortar shop when trading in their p-books. Secondhand bookstore staff is trained in recognizing the resale value of used books based on title demand, genre popularity and condition, so they would be ideal in valuing the acquired p-books. When p-books are traded in, bookstore employees scan the books, which enters them into the service providerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s database of trade-ins. The database is partially accessible by end users on the website and through the app. Users of the service can use the integrated app add-on to look up their p-books to determine if the p-book can be traded in for an e-book and be given an estimate of possible Pages credit. Pages credit is an alternative option for users instead of a direct trade of p-book to e-book for the same title. Pages credit can be accumulated instead of doing
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a direct trade and then be applied as discounts to future e-book purchases. The integrated E-bookTrade mobile app add-on that loads onto e-book retailersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; apps is the most direct way of accessing status of Pages credits, availability of e-book trades, and nearest drop-off point locator. Additionally this can also be accessed via the E-bookTrade website. After drop off, p-books are separated between textbooks and trade books. Used textbooks are resold at the university bookstores, where profit would be shared between the university as an agent and the service provider. Trade books would be treated in the same way through secondhand bookstore partners. P-books determined by secondhand bookstore staff as not profitable would be recycled. Exceptional p-books of worth would be sold to book resellers through online channels. Universities are ideal locations for dropping off p-books for trade in, because the target user, the Generation Fâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;er user type (page 70), consists of mostly students. The E-bookTrade drop-off points are locations where end users can drop off their p-books that they want to trade in for e-books. This would be a service offered by the university to students. The draw for secondhand bookshops to participate in this service offering is due to the foot traffic that they would get from users of the service. While one might think that e-books and p-books are in direct competition, studies have shown that e-books and p-books are not mutually exclusive. E-book consumers, as
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determined by surveys and interviews and also confirmed by other studies, purchase hardcovers in addition to e-books. This service concept gives an example of how a service can influence perception of value and imbue emotional attachment and a sense of ownership into an intangible. Through evoking a sense of ownership of a userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s e-book library, the feeling of ownership is implicitly transferred to the vessel (the e-reader). This connection between content and vessel, even when separated, as seen in the case of digital media goods, exists in the minds of users as one inseparable entity when it comes to attitude and perception. This service concept demonstrates an example of how sacrifice/exchange can be employed to change the subjective value of an intangible. E-booktrade is a solution that is beneficial to e-book consumers, e-book retailers, and publishers. For e-book retailers and publishers, the benefit is more a long term oriented. For the service provider, it means providing intangible goods at a loss as an investment for long-term gain in the form of wider spread e-book adoption.
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CHAPTER
Conclusion
DISCUSSION
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The e-book landscape has been undergoing rapid change as new e-reader technologies develop and new e-reading products are released. Just in 2010, over 12 newly released e-reader devices were introduced at Consumer Electronics Show causing a stir about e-readers, but most of these e-readers flopped in the following year. This thesis was written in the midst of rapid market changes, so it is likely that within the next six months, content specific to e-reader capabilities and e-book presence in the market will become outdated. With that said, the contribution of this study is in the meta findings about intangibles, which can be further developed even as the e-book issues explored eventually lose relevance or potentially become obsolete. This study would have benefited from involvement from other stakeholders such as a major e-book retailers and/or publishers. Unfortunately attempts to contact such stakeholders did not result in collaborations which ultimately was a weakness of this work. Service design is a holistic approach, so ideally key stakeholders should be involved for optimal results.
CONCLUSION Discussion
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CONCLUSION
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While intangible goods are perceived to be of lesser value, the perceived value can be manipulated through the design of tangible touchpoints. The tangible vessel of an intangible good and the content of the intangible are inexplicably tied. Attachment is transferable. Exchange and sacrifice can be employed to transfer and increase subjective value of an intangible from a tangible good. Users subconsciously transfer the meaning, value, and attachment from content to vessel and back as demonstrated by the difficulty users in surveys and interviews had in separating their feelings towards e-books from whichever vessel they associated with accessing e-books. As a result services and intangibles do not exist in a vacuum for designers. A user’s perception of intangibles is connected to its vessel; therefore the tangible aspects of intangibles and services must be carefully considered due to transfer of meaning and value. Additionally, trust can be designed into intangibles through services that increase familiarity through exposure in addition to affording potential users the possibility for ‘trialing’ the intangible good. Familiarity breeds trust, and exposure and trial breed familiarity. For tangible goods, ‘trialability’ can be achieved simply through giving away samples. Intangible goods, however, can achieve this through services.
CONCLUSION Conclusion
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Tsoi, J., 2007. 城市的一角. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/JIMMYTSOI/4979954678
Tsoi, J., 2007. 如果她有一個本地的朋友. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/JIMMYTSOI/5025730715
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Tu, E., 2009. Reading on the beach. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/MLEBOT/4760805662
University of Minnesota Duluth, 2008. Facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible. HTTP://WWW.D.UMN.EDU/LIB/BIBLE/PHOTOS.HTM
Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, 2011. Photo of Codex Manesse. HTTP://WWW.HEIDELBERG-MARKETING.DE/CONTENT/PRESSE/PRESSE_ BILDERDIENST/EVENTS_IN_HEIDELBERG/INDEX_GER.HTML
Vickery, M., 2011. Kindle. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/WORMBEAST/5457117312
Wedin, C., 2010. Suspense and beauty. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/41340283@N03/4309668544
Wise, D.R., 2011. Derrick and pippin. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/DRWISE/5647239783
Wood, B., 2010. Ebook reader in action on the tube. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/TEXTLAD/4288384277
Yasir, Y., 2010. Searching books on kindle. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/YATYASIRKEARNS/4301945795
Yourdon, E., 2011. Old technology meets new technology. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/YOURDON/4453361735
Yourdon, E., 2009. Summertime lunch in Bryant Park. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/YOURDON/3870609298
Zapatero, A.B., 2010. Untitled. Flickr. HTTP://WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/PIANOCOCTAIL/5087518651
IMAGE REFERENCES
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Appendix
MUSIC CASE STUDY
MUSIC CASE STUDY The evolution of music from vinyl to cassette tapes to CDs has taken us from one tangible good to the next. Musicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most recent incarnation, the digital player, has finally given us an influx of intangible goods in the form of digital music. One only needs to look to the success of pioneers such as iTunes or YouTube to recognize that consumers have finally become receptive to intangible digital goods. The virtual realm has now also begun expansion into selling of streaming movies and TV shows.
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While my master’s thesis work primarily explores the shift of literary work from the spoken word to physical books to electronic books, I present additionally digital music as a case study. This takes a closer look at the shift of music goods from tangible to intangible. The publishing industry can learn from examining the developments in the music industry in the last decades.
MATERIALIZATION OF MUSIC From 1857 onward with the invention of the earliest known recording device, the phonautograph, the temporality of music changed. As new music storage technology was introduced, sound became increasingly more compact and more portable with each new format. But even as recorded media became smaller in size, it was still limited by its physicality. With the introduction of digital music files, however, recorded music became unprecedentedly more portable than its tangible predecessors. Until the late 1970s, records — vinyl discs that had sounds encoded onto grooves which could be decoded by a needle — were the medium of choice for recorded music. Then came magnetic tape cartridge formats such as compact cassette tapes (1962) , 8-tracks (1964), and mini-cassettes (1967) which could be read through stereo players and later the portable
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Walkman. This was followed by the arrival of compact discs (1982) to the market, which could store digital data. With the push of digital compact discs on the public, sales for CDs “were not as brisk as [record companies] had hoped,” as vinyl and cassette users remained unconvinced (McLeod, 2005).
DIGITAL REVOLUTION Unlike digital music predecessors that required a physical vessel for storage and a tangible reader to access the media, the digital music formats could be stored directly onto the tangible reader without requiring a physical vessel form itself (Tennant, 2008). The digital format, existing in intangible form, allows music to be reduced to its most essential components including the metadata and the music itself. Extraneous components such as packaging, material form, album art, liner notes and lyrics are stripped away entirely or left as bonus material (McCarthy, 2010). With the invention of the MPEG 1, Audio Layer 3 (MP3) encoder format (1994), the game changed as the biggest revolution began (Collard 2006). The intangible nature of MP3s provides for the condition of portability. The removal of digital bulk through MP3’s compression algorithm allows for enhanced portability of digital music by reducing file sizes and easing transfer, storage, and reproduction of the files. This “unparalleled acces-
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sibility” according to Katz (2010), “could be understood in terms of speed, ease, and breath,” which ultimately added to MP3’s instant rise in popularity and adoption.The counter movement: rise of vinyl Even as these goods have evolved, their predecessors continue to exist alongside them. Take vinyl as another example; a media that has been touted as obsolete for decades. We find value in owning things, and charm in the nuances of their imperfections. The result is the record functioning as much as a collector’s item as a functional product. It is thus highly unlikely that print media, or tangible goods, will become extinct even as they are phased out seemingly in favor of their digital counterparts. “Nostalgia, as a feeling that is central to modern experience, is the unflinching witness to negative design” (Maeda, 2006). As digital music proliferates, vinyl, as an object of nostalgia and ritual, enjoys a resurgence in popularity among those who cling to the tangible in rebellion. This paradoxical rise of both digital music and vinyl illustrates that while consumers accept MP3s for their convenience, they have not lost the desire to have ownership over objects—objects, that simply for being objects, represent authenticity, high value, and permanence (McCarthy, 2010). Listeners have a relationship to their music which goes beyond auditory—it extends into the other senses---particularly the desire to fulfill one’s haptic sense. The physical manifestation of
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Photo credit: Sklar, B., 2009. Baskets of $1 records on sale at End of an Era in Austin, Texas. The New York Times.
“The unique value of the ‘authentic’ work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value” (Walter Benjamin,1936) vinyl records allows listeners a feeling of security of ownership and to form a sense of attachment. With tangible objects, one gets a sense of ownership simply by physically having it in one’s hands and being able to exert physical control over it.
Additionally, the desirable aspect of the accessibility of MP3s at little cost and no physical effort to obtain makes the appeal of finding rare vinyl records all the more special, alluring and pleasurable (Katz 2011; McCarthy, 2010). While MP3s can be collected and hoarded as well, the ease of collecting makes them, to music aficionados, less special. Even as these goods have evolved, their predecessors continue to exist alongside them. Take vinyl as another example; a media that has been touted as obsolete for decades. We find value in owning things, and charm in the nuances of their imperfections. The result is the record functioning as much as a collector’s item as a functional product. It is thus highly unlikely that print media, or tangible goods, will become extinct even as they are phased out seemingly in favor of their digital counterparts. “Nostalgia, as a feeling that is central to modern experience, is the unflinching witness to negative design” (Maeda, 2006). As digital music proliferates, vinyl, as an object of nostalgia and ritual, enjoys a resurgence in popularity among those who cling to the tangible in rebellion. This paradoxical rise of both digital music and vinyl illustrates that while consumers accept MP3s for their convenience, they have not lost the desire to have ownership over objects—objects, that simply for being objects, represent authenticity, high value, and permanence (McCarthy, 2010).
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RISE OF PIRACY “Unlike vinyl, the binary coding and modularity of MP3s allow for them to be easily reproduced, reassembled, and distributed” (McCarthy, 2010). Furthermore, these digital goods, unlike their traditional tangible counterparts, cannot be controlled physically; they cannot be sequestered on shelves or behind display shelves, protected by security alarms, or price-tagged (Katz, 2010). This absence of the ability of record company stakeholders to exert physical control over these digital goods is what scares them—there is an uncertainty that people feel when they lose physical control of an object. “Digitalization has placed the entire music industry in a state of flux. The large corporations, the small record dealers, and musicians . All face an uncertain future. Those who are able to innovate are finding new sources of income as well as unprecedented freedom” (Tennant, 2008). Digital music follows the pattern of a disruptive technology. Disruptive technologies are defined as technologies that enter at the bottom of a market, where they are ignored by established stakeholders and “eventually grow to the point where they eclipse old systems” (Capps, 2009). “..the music industry itself is responsible for ushering in the dark days of downloading. If record companies had their way, they likely would have never allowed their music to be sold on the Internet—much like if
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early 20th-century song publishers had had their way, we would still be diligently buying their sheet music; no phonograph, no radio, no cassette recorder, no MP3 player, not even the player pianoâ&#x20AC;? (McLeod, 2005). While the music industry tried for years, simply lagging in creating legal, attractive platforms for users to obtain digital music, the first large peer-to-peer (P2P) music sharing network, Napster, entered this vacuum in the market to provide a potent substitute, and unauthorized sharing of files flourished as the network attracted as many as 80 million users (Collard, 2006). This is not to place blame on the rise of the MP3 to pirating, as the practice of copying and exchanging music illegally predates computers and the Internet; however, the practice of copying of music, previously referred to as home-tapping, was limited to music people had available to them (through radio or other physical copies---be it original, legitimately bought copies, or illegally copied) were local in nature and limited to small circles (Hughes & Lang 2003 cited by Dolata, 2011).
FAILED ATTEMPTS As mentioned earlier, the music industry lagged in creating an attractive model for users to obtain digital music legally. What happened according to Dolata (2011) was that it was ultimately â&#x20AC;&#x153;the (In)ability to Adapt: structural[ly], institutional[ly] and
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organizational[ly].â&#x20AC;? Dolata (2011) goes on to state that the problem is rooted in the fact that â&#x20AC;&#x153;the music industry is not a sector in which new technologies are developedâ&#x20AC;?; this contributed to their collective response to the introduction of MP3 technology as defensive, uninformed general attitude, and hesitant at best, which has persisted until relatively recently (Dolata, 2011). This is not to overlook the technological developments in the evolution of music vessels and readers, but as Dolata (2011) goes on to argue: technology was never seen as a primary competitive advantage and understood as a part of the infrastructure of the music business rather than something as a basis for restructuring the market. Between 2000 and 2003, major music companies made numerous failed attempts to organize, control, and introduce their own platforms for selling their own commercial downloads (Dolata, 2011). This parallels what is happening now with the publishing industry and publishing houses struggling to cooperate together and developing digital distribution models that disregard the interest of their consumers, which can be seen for example by restrictive, proprietary DRM and high pricing (Dolata, 2011).
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Appendix CUSTOMER JOURNEY OF BUYING E-BOOK Figure 16.
Customer journey of price-sensitive e-reader owner
HEAR ABOUT BOOK THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNEL
LOOK UP BOOK IN E-READER IN E-BOOKSTORE
CHECK PRICE. IF TOO HIGH, ABORT
READ REVIEWS & DETERMINE IF SOUNDS PROMISING
SEND 1ST CHAPTER SAMPLE FOR FREE TO E-READER
READ FIRST CHAPTER WHICH ENDS AT CLIFFHANGER
Figure 15.
Customer journey of “avid reader” user (see pageSeite 136)
HEAR ABOUT BOOK THROUGH WORD OF MOUTH
LOOK UP BOOK ON AMAZON ON COMPUTER
ONE CLICK TO BUY
INSTANTLY FULL E-BOOK IS LOADED
READ REVIEWS & DETERMINE IF SOUNDS PROMISING
READ E-BOOK
PURCHASE FROM SITE
SEND E-BOOK TO E-READER
TURN ON KINDLE & SEE NEW E-BOOK LOADED
READ E-BOOK
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IF LOVED, PURCHASE HARDCOVER
HEAR ABOUT BOO WORD OF M
x
PRICING MODELS E-book Unit Sales by Price*
Total Revenue by Price*
1000
Logarithmic regression
E-book sold
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f(x)= -633.01 In(x) + 14443.79
600 400 200
$1
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$7
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Figure 18.
E-book total revenue by price
Gross revenue
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Sales
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PRICING MODELS
Economic theory of Law of Demand suggests an inverse relationship between price and demand of a product. In other words, as prices of a product increases, the demand and hence the sales decrease. This is demonstrated by the demand curve plotted in E-book Unit Sales by Price (Figure 3) that reveals a elastic demand of e-books with negative elasticity. The relationship between e-book price, demand and revenue can be seen in Figure 3 and Figure 4. The total revenue curve was determined by total e-book revenue = e-book price x e-book quantity sold. The total revenue curve (Figure 4) demonstrates that approximately $2.99 - $3.99 unit price yields the maximum revenue of an e-book.
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* Konrath, 2010 cited by Slusher, 2011
E-book unit sales by price
* Konrath, 2010 cited by Slusher, 2011
Figure 17.
Wholesale model The wholesale pricing model is the same as the traditional brickand-mortar model used in trade book publishing. Retailers buy books from a publisher for a discount off of the publisher’s recommended retail price. The retailer then determines the price at which they sell the books to customers. Amazon adopted this model for selling e-books. With this pricing model, they were able to price e-books competitively to encourage adoption of e-reading.
Agency model The agency model operates under the idea that the publisher sells the product to the customer, and the retailer acts only as an agent, who receives a commission for each sale (Shatzkin, 2010). The agency model allows publishers to retain more control of pricing and renegotiate “supply chain splits of the consumer dollar” (Shatzkin, 2010). As of mid-2010, e-book retailers have shifted from a wholesale pricing model to an agency pricing model, as made popular by Apple and is favored by the 5 out of 6 major publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster)1 while disdained by e-book retailers and e-book consumers with the exception of tablet owners (Amazon, 2010). Amazon UK (2010) reports that 1 Random House was the last major publishing house to switch to agency pricing model in 2011 due to pressure from being excluded from the iBookstore.
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Retailerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s commission Information graphic based on data from: Rich, 2010
$3.90
$2.27 $0.78 $0.50 $9.09 $5.54
$3.25 $1.00 $0.80
cking
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Publisherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cut
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eting
Mark
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Expense breakdown $12.99 $26 E-book (agency pricing)
Figure 19.
Hardcover retail
Expense Breakdown
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the rate of growth of e-books priced with the agency model from January 2010 until October 2010 has slowed to about half of the rate of growth of wholesale model e-books. This growing shift towards an agency pricing model heightens consumer resistance towards adopting e-books. This indicates that an increased adoption of the agency pricing model seems to affect customer acceptance of e-books negatively. Agency pricing means higher prices for consumers – most of which were even more reluctant to try e-books due to the pricing of even the lower-price-point of the wholesale model. Publishers reportedly switched to the agency model out of fear that Amazon’s aggressive loss leader pricing tactics would devalue books (Derrico, 2011). Through an extremely competitive pricing policy of selling newly released bestseller e-books under the cost price (i.e. $9.99 for an e-book that Amazon spends $12.99 to buy from a publisher), Amazon hopes to win a substantial market share at the same time as strengthening the the e-book market. The key to their pricing strategy seems to be a lock in of customers. Publishers were more than eager for the introduction of additional big e-book retailer competitors to the e-book market (i.e. iBookstore and Google e-bookstore) and to switch to the agency model to lessen Amazon’s 70-80% hold on the e-book market as of 2010 (Carnoy, 2010).
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Potential E-book models Freemium model Freemium model entails giving away a service for free to generate a large customer base and then using it as marketing for introducing the customer base to a paid premium service (Kotliar, 2011). The freemium business model was originally employed by software companies in the 1980â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s under the term â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;freewareâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and has evolved to to become a popular web 2.0 business model. Notable examples of the fremium model include Skype, Spotify, Dropbox and Flickr. With e-books, this could mean introducing an ad-based service that allows users to read e-books for free with integrated ads or the users could read for a limited duration for free per month. The users could be offered a premium ad-free subscription that allow them to lease e-books instead of buying a license. Serialized model The serialized model is characterized by installments released over a period of time similarly to how pulp magazines and manga (Japanese comics) are issued. The user receives periodic installments of the story, which in theory, could be never-ending.
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E S Chunk model E-books could be sold by the chapter much in the same way that a TV-series can be sold by the episode. In the past, VHS tapes of a TV-series were sold in bundles of a few episodes per tape and DVDs of a TV-series were sold by the season. With streaming video, TV-series, through online services such as Hulu or the iTunes store, can, as an option, be purchased by the episode. Similarly, digital music retailers such as Amazon and the iTunes store provide the same option of purchasing individual tracks of an album as an alternative to purchasing an entire album. The cost of buying in bulk (such as a full album or TV-series season) offers the consumer the opportunity to buy digital goods at a reduced rate as compared to buying each unit (a track or an episode) at a higher per unit cost. This allows retailers to potentially make more money from consumers who buy a few individual units as a to sample a TV-series and then decide to purchase the bulk due to the cheaper per-unit cost. This would lure in hesitant consumers who might otherwise not have purchased an e-book due to concern that they might realize 1 ½ chapters into reading it that they have no interest in finishing the book. This à la carte pay-by-the-chapter model would allow consumers to feel safer through the trial option. While Amazon currently offers an immediate sample of the first chapter of a novel, this model offers consumers a guarantee that they would only pay for what they actually end up reading.
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EXISTING SERVICES EXISTING SERVICES Electronic book-related offerings that have appeared in the last three years can be categorized into three groups: social reading, social publishing, and gamification.
Social reading Readum is an online offering that adds a social layer to reading e-books on Google Books (not to be confused with the Google E-bookstore). Google Books is a book search that allows users to read portions of a book online for free, provides links to sites where users can purchase the p-books, and provides price comparisons for p-book purchases. Google E-bookstore, on the other hand, is Googleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s E-book retailing website. With Readum, users can annotate text from Google Books and post on the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Facebook group or newsfeed so that friends can potentially discuss the passage through leaving comments.
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This offering is primarily catered towards academics and Google Book usersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;most of which access the platform for free through their browsers, so it cannot be assumed that they are consumers of e-books. Like Readum, Book Glutton attempts to make reading more social. Readum draws a bridge between e-reading and social networking, but it is confined to the one action of posting annotations from Google Books to Facebook. Book Glutton, on the other hand, offers a whole system for social reading. Book Glutton is an online platform that turns books into forums. Users join reading groups that allow users to read e-books together through a web browser and through mobile devices. As a user reads a page, a synchronous chatroom for that book for the users of a specific reading group is open parallel to the text. On another column parallel to the text is a column for writing comments in response to paragraphs in the text, which can become threaded discussions. Public domain books are offered for free to users, but it also acts as a channel of distribution for publishers. E-books offered through publishers can be bought on Book Glutton. Goodreads and Shelfari are social networking websites based off of reading and books. They allow users to catalog and visualize what theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve read into visual, digital bookshelves. Users can rate and review books that they have read, browse books to potentially read, and look through the book recommendations and libraries of friends.
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Coupland, a concept by IDEO, is for social networking with books similar to Goodreads and Shelfari except within a professional context. A company that has Coupland can allow its employees to make a list of all the books they are reading. If enough employees are reading the same book, then it gets added to the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s library. The people on the platform can see which books are popular with people in a company, and employees can see what their coworkers are reading.
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Social publishing & Crowdsourcing Red Lemonade is a platform for lesser-known authors to get support from other writers on their writing. It is based on the premise that all writers are readers. Authors post their writing onto this online platform, and readers give critique. Sometimes work builds a sizable following and potentially could get published. While the concept has promise, the execution is lacking largely due to poor interaction design. Book Country, another social publishing initiative, attempts to do something similar but has a user interface that better considers and enables its users.
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â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is talk of diminished value of publishers in the face of digital books, but the reality is that publishers are as necessary as everâ&#x20AC;? (Mod, 2011). Mod, a publisher, writes that the role of the publisher is evolving from that of a deep-pocketed gatekeeper to curators, advisors and community builders (2011). Unbound is a new way of publishing and funding novels through an online platform modeled off of Kickstarter.com. It allows established authors to pitch novel ideas to readers rather than publishers. Users can pledge their monetary support to help a pitch get written and published. In other words, readers can help an author write a book through pre-ordering it before its even written. If a pitch reaches enough supporters within a predetermined time frame, the author begins writing the novel.
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Unbound users can pledge their support to a pitch in varying incremental amounts (i.e. £10, £20, £50, £75). Depending on the level of support that they pledge, they receive different rewards. All supporters get access to the author’s early drafts and can leave the authors comments on his or her Unbound profile. Through the pledge of support and the prestige of getting their name listed inside of the book, readers feel a sense of ownership over the novel. Additionally through having access to the author’s early drafts and by having communication with the author as he or she writes the novel, readers form an attachment to the work. In the case that the pitch does not meet the required support within the timeframe, all money gets refunded to the supporters. As of September 2011, 2 out of 13 books have hit their funding mark. Critics of the platform argue that it is a “cargo cult version of Kickstarter” (Hon, 2011). A cargo cult, as used by Hon, refers to “anyone who imitates superficial features of a system … and hopes to replicate the original’s success, without any thought or understanding of the intrinsic workings of the system” (Hon, 2011).
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Kickstarter is the largest crowdfunding platform for launching projects, and as of July 2011, has had over 10,000 successfully funded projects (Coldewey, 2011). The critique of the Unbound online platform is that it only allows pitch submissions from literary agents of established authors. This model makes sense and would appeal to independent, unsigned authors, but they are being excluded from the platform. One of the contributors to the success of Kickstarter is the transparency that it offers users: they can see how much funding a project is getting. Unbound, on the other hand, lacks the transparency of Kickstarterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;publishers are not keen on sharing numbers with users of money raised. Additionally an appeal of Kickstarter projects is that they feel homegrownâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;project pitchers write their own text and shoot their own amateurish videos that appeal to users, because they feel like they are supporting an underdog. There is an air of authenticity due to the amateurish quality. It conjures a sense of trust in users of the project pitchers. Pitches found on Unbound are polished: videos are shot professionally by Unbound and the publisher also writes the pitch descriptions rather than the authors. As a result, Unbound lacks the intimacy and perceived authenticity of Kickstarter. Unbound attempts to recreate this amateurish, grass-roots feeling through the aesthetic of their website, but it feels contrived juxtaposed with the polished videos posted on the site. This inconsistent message instills distrust in users. Additionally, success of particular Kickstarter pitches is cited as being offering unique, creative rewards for supporters. For
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example, an independent filmmaker rewarded supporters with handmade limited edition flip books and even held Skype sessions with potential supporters (Hope, 2010). Unbound’s rewards, on the other hand, are uniform across all pitches and lack the personalization of Kickstarter’s model. And finally, the most glaring short-coming of Unbound is that unlike Kickstarter, which appeals to our desire to support an underdog in achieving a goal, Unbound lacks this philanthropic angle. The site is designed in such a way that users get the feeling that they are there just to purchase a product that they want. After all, the authors toted on Unbound are established authors, and one might even question why these successful authors would need to be on the Unbound platform when they already have the notoriety and name recognition necessary to get their pitches approved by publishers. Similarly to Kickstarter and Unbound, the music alternative ArtistShare offers an online crowdfunding platform that allows fans to show appreciation for and support their favorite musicians through financing. The platform, which was started before Kickstarter or Unbound, was originally a reaction to the rise of online piracy of digital music. The originators of the ArtistShare platform wanted to find a way to offer value to music that couldn’t be pirated, and the conclusion that they came to was that “the true value of music lies in” the creative process that each musician uniquely goes through in creating their art form.
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Gamification Gamification is the use of game mechanics applied outside of games to encourage certain behavior (Raymer, 2011). This is not to be confused with stand-alone games. Game mechanics refers to constructing rules that guide the interaction and behavior of users. Examples of game mechanics would be: setting shortterm objectives and long-term goals, providing feedback to guide the behavior, measure progress, and reward effort (Raymer, 2011). IDEO concept Alice re-imagines the way people consume e-books. Instead of reading a book, the reader has an experience akin to playing a video game. Readers solve puzzles to unlock chapters and do activities to move the story forward. While this more literal employment of game mechanics might appeal to children, young adults have emphasized in surveys and interviews conducted that they do not want to be distracted by videos and social networking when they read. They read to escape into the world of the book. They want to read, because they enjoy reading.
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Miscellaneous 24 Symbols is a cloud-based freemium e-book subscription service that is frequently described as being the Spotify of e-books. Users can access e-books through the cloud, which can be read for free with ads or without ads if the user opts to pay a subscription fee. 24 Symbols, in its current state, is a cargo cult of Spotify. Its offerings are limited to mostly public domain e-books, which can already be accessed free through other sites such as the Amazon store, Project Gutenberg, Baen, ManyBooks, and PlanetPDF among others. Nelson, another e-reading concept from IDEO targeted at students, provides the context for reading material. When a reader begins reading an e-book, a side panel appears allowing access to additional content such as online debates about passages in the book, reference material such as information regarding the cultural impact of the text, and additional related reading materia. The reader can participate in the discussions on the text. Nelson aids the reader in forming his or her own opinion. Nelson takes e-books in the direction of interactive e-textbooks.
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