Business models of traditional and new publishing

Synthetized in a single business model canvas, you can easily see the main differences between the traditional and new pusblishing industry.

Books have existed for a very long time and play an important role in people’s life. Book publishers had time to build a strong market position and to anchor their brand in readers mind. These are called “traditional book publishers”. For about two years, their position has become weaker and more and more endangered by the evolution of technology. With the success of Apple, the behaviour of people has changed and they are getting used to tactile and modern products. Following the innovative trend, a new way of book publishing was created, the whole traditional publishing process has been disrupted.

Thanks to the new way of publishing, it has become easier to publish a book. Everybody is now able to sell his book. After writing it, a simple exportation to PDF followed by an upload to a publishing platform are required. Then the sales can begin. A consequence of this process is that there is no longer quality control on the contents of books compared to traditional publishing.

Each process has its strengths and weaknesses, but for the moment, none of them outperforms the other. For example Amazon has announced in January 2010 that 6 Kindle eBook are sold for every 10 physical books when both editions are available. The association of American Publishers declared that eBooks sales have nearly quadrupled between January and August 2010 ($ 89.8 million in 2009 à $ 263 million in 2010). Even if this growth seems amazing eBooks sales represent only 9% of total consumer book sales in 2010, but they represented only 3.30 % in 2009. This shows the exponential increase of eBook sales.