E-book readers and e-books are a fairly recent, but popular, innovation. Even so, the public have accepted and become accustomed to them very rapidly. A good deal of the credit for that must surely go to the Amazon Kindle reader – in particular the Kindle 2.0 which hit the market in February of 2009. Amazon’s upgraded third generation Kindle was unveiled in August of 2010 and, despite doom laden predictions for the Kindle following the launch of Apple’s iPad, is selling more quickly than ever. However, it was the Kindle 2.0 that really brought e-books to the attention of the public.

Equally important was the huge choice of Kindle books on offer. Amazon has always been ahead of the chasing pack in terms of the number of titles on offer. At the moment they have more 750,000 Kindle books available on their website – and those are just the paid titles. There are also an additional 1.8 million titles which are out of copyright and are now available for download free of charge.

However, whilst the public may have adapted to e-books very quickly, it remains to be seen if the main publishing companies have got their corporate heads around the concept yet. The long established publishing cycle has been significantly amended by the appearance of e-books. E-books are not only cheaper than traditional printed books – there’s no reason why they wouldn’t be released alongside the conventional printed hardback version. The e-book version is available immediately – no need to wait months for the paperback to be released.

Clearly, the availability of a cheaper version alongside the hardback is something which could have an impact upon hardback sales. According to Amazon, they are currently selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks. This seems to have caused a great deal of concern amongst many of the major publishing companies. They have already had several run ins with Amazon over the pricing of e-books.

Publishers such as Hachette, Penguin and Harper Collins recently adopted the “agency model” for their e-books. In layman’s terms, the price is set by the publisher as opposed to the retailer (Amazon). This has generated elevated prices for some e-books – with some of them actually costing more than the printed version.

Kindle users retaliated quickly by awarding “one star” reviews to books where they felt that the Kindle book price was excessively high. Some fairly critical comments were left on the Amazon website – aimed at the publishers by and large – and it was suggested that potential customers boycott both the Kindle and the hardback versions until prices are set at more reasonable levels. There have already been some price cuts.

Adopting such a profit oriented approach seems to be a little short sighted on the part of the publishers. After all, it seems reasonable to assume that e-book readers owners read a good number of books. You wouldn’t buy an e-book reader if you read a book a month, would you? In other words, e-book reader users are the major publisher’s target audience.

It also seems obvious that e-books should cost less than printed books. In addition to the lack of paper, ink and bindings, they have virtually no delivery fees associated with them. They are also more environmentally friendly – even allowing for the materials used in the e-book readers themselves. It seems likely that the owners of e-book readers could work this out and that they would, quite reasonably, expect prices to be set accordingly.

The publisher’s tactics may help to keep their profits up in the short term – but they risk alienating some of their best customers in the process. Unjustified price levels seem likely to annoy the buying public and, after a few one star reviews and public calls for buying boycotts, authors would presumably also be somewhat disenchanted. The e-book revolution has just as much to offer publishers as it does the public. The savings apply on both sides of the fence, publishers save money – which should be passed on to the public. If publishers can modify their business model to accommodate e-books, then they will continue to enjoy success. On the other hand, if their desire for short term profits inures them to the possible opportunities offered by this new medium, they will be rejected by both their authors and their readers.