Storming the gatekeepers: Digital disintermediation in the market for books

Waldfogel, Joel; Reimers, Imke

doi:10.1016/j.infoecopol.2015.02.001

Cited by 80 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…e‐Books have lower costs than printed books (Waldfogel & Reimers, ). Table presents typical cost breakdowns by book types circa 2010 .…”

Section: Empirical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other notable companies that ventured into e-books around that time include Adobe, Microsoft, Palm, and Sony. 1 e-Books have lower costs than printed books (Waldfogel & Reimers, 2015). Table 1 presents typical cost breakdowns by book types circa 2010.…”

Section: E-booksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, we contribute to the growing empirical research on the impact of digital innovations on information products such as music (e.g., Waldfogel, ), television (e.g., Waldfogel, ), movies (e.g., Waldfogel, ), and newspapers (e.g., Seamans & Zhu, ). Given the historical and continuing importance of book publishing, our study adds to the relatively scarce literature on how this industry operates in the digital age (Chen, Ho, & Smith, ; Gilbert, ; Waldfogel & Reimers, ). Our findings on publishers managing their engagements in both the physical and the digital ecosystems are indicative of the business challenges as well as the opportunities complementors face today.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Complementors' engagement in an ecosystem: A study of publishers' e‐book offerings on Amazon Kindle

Wang

Miller

2019

Strategic Management Journal

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Research Summary In ecosystems, tensions between value creation and appropriation can arise when complementors form relationships with a partner that benefits from network effects. While creating value collectively, these relationships strengthen the network effects, which increase the partner's ability to appropriate value. We posit that complementors strategize their product offerings to benefit from the relationship with the partner while preserving bargaining power by keeping relationships with other partners as outside options. We examine book publishers' product portfolios in the Amazon Kindle e‐book and the printed book ecosystems. Our results illuminate specific product offering decisions by large publishers that are more protective of the printed book ecosystem and less conducive to Kindle's success. This research adds to the literature on interorganizational relationships, platform ecosystems, and managing digital innovations. Managerial Summary How do book publishers deal with Amazon? This paper compares book publishers' product offerings on Amazon's Kindle digital platform and in the physical print channel. We find that publishers offer high demand products as e‐books on Kindle to benefit from logistics savings. Yet, relative to small publishers, large publishers product decisions that support Kindle less, such as withholding some of their greatest revenue generating books. Such decisions could both limit Kindle's attractiveness to the consumers and preserve the economic viability of the print channel as an outside option. These findings improve our understanding of how companies can leverage their product portfolios to both benefit from digital technology efficiencies and maintain their bargaining power vis‐à‐vis digital platforms.

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“…e‐Books have lower costs than printed books (Waldfogel & Reimers, ). Table presents typical cost breakdowns by book types circa 2010 .…”

Section: Empirical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: E-booksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Complementors' engagement in an ecosystem: A study of publishers' e‐book offerings on Amazon Kindle

Wang

Miller

2019

Strategic Management Journal

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“…This growth was mainly triggered by a decrease in production and distribution costs to virtually zero with the advent of digital publishing over the Internet. By 2013, the market share of self-published e-books has grown to an estimated tenth of both the number of books in bestseller lists and overall unit sales (Waldfogel and Reimers, 2015).…”

Section: Empirical Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building an Online Reputation with Free Content: Evidence from the E-book Market

Zēgners

2018

Proceedings

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An important strategy to build a reputation in markets with asymmetric information is to practice introductory pricing. By selling their product at a lower introductory price, sellers can increase demand, induce more buyers to provide feedback, and thus build a reputation more quickly. I examine a form of introductory pricing that is particularly popular in digital markets, namely offering free content to consumers. I argue that offering free content to build a reputation can be a double-edged strategy. It does not only attract buyers with a high preference, but also buyers with a low preference for the product. Low-preference buyers give worse feedback, resulting in a negative selection effect on a seller's reputation. I estimate the strength of this effect using data from an online self-publishing platform where I observe independent e-book authors either selling their e-books at a price or giving them away as free content. By exploiting the fact that I observe ratings for free and purchased versions of the same e-book, I show that those consumers who obtain an e-book as free content rate it worse than reviewers who buy it at a positive price, consistent with a negative selection effect on reputation.

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“…The proliferation of software tools has made it possible for a greater number of people to capture, manipulate and disseminate high-quality digital copies (Hesmondhalgh, 2007;Waldfogel, 2011;2014). In book publishing, digital networking and typesetting software have enabled 'print-on-demand' business models, disintermediating the role of traditional publishers in the value chain (Waldfogel and Reimers, 2015). The cost of digitally capturing and archiving printed material has also declined dramatically, with impacts on libraries, archives and knowledge institutions (Gadd et al, 2003;Nelson and Irwin, 2014).…”

Section: ) Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I should like you to see them some time”

Stobo

Patterson

Erickson

et al. 2018

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Purpose The inability of cultural institutions to make available digital reproductions of collected material highlights a shortcoming with the existing copyright framework in a number of national jurisdictions. Overlapping efforts to remedy the situation were recently undertaken in the form of EU Directive 2012/28/EU, the “Orphan Works” directive, and a new licensing scheme introduced by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO). The purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate both the EU and UK policy approaches, drawing on data collected during a live rights clearance simulation. Design/methodology/approach The authors attempted to clear rights in a sample of 432 items contained in the mixed-media Edwin Morgan Scrapbooks collection held by the University of Glasgow Library. Data were collected on the resource costs incurred at each stage of the rights clearance process, from initial audit of the collection, through to compliance with diligent search requirements under EU Directive 2012/28/EU and the UKIPO licensing procedures. Findings Comparing results against the two current policy options for the use of orphan works, the authors find that the UKIPO licensing scheme offers a moderate degree of legal certainty but also the highest cost to institutions (the cost of diligent search in addition to licence fees). The EU exception to copyright provides less legal certainty in the case of rightsholder re-emergence, but also retains high diligent search costs. Both policy options may be suitable for institutions wishing to make use of a small number of high-risk works, but neither approach is currently suitable for mass digitisation. Research limitations/implications This rights clearance exercise is focussed on a single case study with unique properties (with a high proportion of partial works embedded in a work of bricolage). Consequently, the results obtained in this study reflect differences from simulation studies on other types of orphan works. However, by adopting similar methodological and reporting standards to previous empirical studies, the authors can compare rights clearance costs between collections of different works. Originality/value This study is the first to empirically assess the 2014 UK orphan works licensing scheme from an institutional perspective. The authors hope that it will contribute to an understanding of how policy could more effectively assist libraries and archives in their digitisation efforts.

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Storming the gatekeepers: Digital disintermediation in the market for books

Cited by 80 publications

References 9 publications

Complementors' engagement in an ecosystem: A study of publishers' e‐book offerings on Amazon Kindle

Complementors' engagement in an ecosystem: A study of publishers' e‐book offerings on Amazon Kindle

Building an Online Reputation with Free Content: Evidence from the E-book Market

“I should like you to see them some time”

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