Just when you thought everybody was starting to get along again, Arnaud Nourry—the worldwide CEO for France’s Lagardère Publishing and Hachette Livre—caused all kinds of consternation by saying to interviewer Harsimran Gill at Scroll.in last week that “the ebook is a stupid product.”
Immediately, of course, soldiers for digital lined up to curse the comment, while “print resurgence” enthusiasts headed out onto the high street for a block party.
The occasion for comment was the 10th anniversary of Hachette’s presence in India. Nourry, one of the most astute corporate chiefs in publishing, was actually focused on how difficult it has been for publishing to find salable enhancements for the digital edition of a book. The many expensive attempts at apps, the kids’ books with AR dinosaurs jumping off the page, the “enhanced ebooks” that play sounds and videos—these have generally left readers pretty cold.
Nourry did not say that he’s chucking his digital inventory into the Seine. In fact, he has presided over Hachette’s acquisition of three video game outfits with which he’s hoping to find some development synergy for further exploration of a progressed electronic format. Moreover, he seems to feel comfortable with the place that ebooks hold in the major markets, and he is unconcerned with what he calls a mild market contraction to about 20 percent digital in the UK and US, but with pricing at a level he says “keeps the ecosystem alive.”
The pricing is key to his point. Nourry now calls the year-long 2014 renegotiation battle that Hachette went through with Amazon a “little battle,” and he sees his victory to be that he retained the right to set ebook prices. As long as he can prevent plunging discounts, he calls Amazon “a very efficient retailer, able to ship books almost everywhere in the world very quickly. … a real opportunity for publishers.”
In terms of the format, though, Nourry shares with many in publishing a disappointment that ebooks haven’t been much of an innovation. “The ebook is a stupid product,” he says. “It is exactly the same as print, except it’s electronic. There is no creativity, no enhancement, no real digital experience. We, as publishers, have not done a great job going digital. We’ve tried. We’ve tried enhanced or enriched ebooks—didn’t work. We’ve tried apps, websites with our content—we have one or two successes among a hundred failures. I’m talking about the entire industry. We’ve not done very well.”
And yet, proponents of ebooks and the conveniences they offer (many books on one device, reading adjustments, almost immediate acquisition of a new book, etc.) argue he’s missing the point.
Bottom line: We think that Monsieur Nourry is overlooking the possibility that readers have rejected most ebook enhancements because all they really want is to read electronically. And while we wish publishers well with explorations of new forms, as long as an ebook can be as immersive and accessible as a print book—especially in long-form fiction—the “stupid” ebook is probably all the market wants for now.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
