Download - Subscription services
Subscription services ADIBF May 7th 2015
Kåre Halldén CEO & Co-founder
Readly Books Stockholm, Sweden
The next 45 minutes
• Subscription services
• Small market perspective
• Lessons learned
• Global (?) market view
• Untapped opportunities
• Questions?
About Readly Books
• Swedish digital book subscription service
• All types of books
• Joint venture
About Readly
• Streaming Magazine service
• Available in Sweden, UK, US and Germany
• Books (Sweden only)
Our background
• - a Swedish Content Management System
• Digital publishing for international media companies, such as…
Our background
Sweden
Sweden
Sweden
Sweden - Literature
Sweden – Book market
• Total value sales about €350M (UK: €1,900M)
• Declining sales last few years
Sweden – tech access
• 91% of Swedes have a computer
• 73% of Swedes have a smart phone
• 51% of Swedes have a tablet
Sweden – tech access
• 37 % of e-commerce from mobile devices
• 84% of Swedish 5-8 year olds have access to a tablet
Sweden – Ebook market
• About 2%...
– Most of which is library e-lending
Why?
• Small language area – ROI difficult for publishers
• Digital rights slow to adapt
• E-readers never caught on
• No Amazon…
The challenge (Sweden)
• Every market needs a catalyst
• The attention economy
• Young people’s reading competence down
What we did
Timeline
March 2013
March 2014
Readly Magazines Launch (SE)
Readly Books Launch (SE)
Publisher terms
• Equal terms
• No risk, no obligations
• Revenue share – 70% to publishers
• Better content=more revenue
Publisher motivation
• Monetize backlist
• Stimulate growth in digital reading – right timing
• Free of charge. Zero conversion cost.
• Reading patterns
Publishers
Customer perspective
• All the benefits of a subscription service:
– Full access everywhere (incl. offline)
– Fixed cost
– Growing catalogue
General e-book offering
Full family reading service
Casual reading
• Cookbooks
• Exercise / dieting
• Music, photography
Children’s books
• Intuitive experience
• Alternative to Angry Birds
• No interaction, no sound, no buttons
• We rely on the narrative – the book isn’t broken
Our target group
• People who don’t like to read…
What do people read?
The Global Subscription Market
Ebooks: The final subscription frontier?
Subscription services: English language
Subscription services: International
Trends
• The Volume Game…
– Majority of titles backlist and self-published
• Target: the avid reader
– Selling the discount
• Globalization (?)
• Diversification
– Audio books, ebook sales, curation efforts
Opportunities
Focus on demand, not supply
No of available titles per category:
Children'sBooks
Non-fiction
Fiction
Focus on demand, not supply
No of page views per category:
Children'sBooks
Non-fiction
Fiction
Focus on demand, not supply
No of readers per category:
Children'sBooks
Non-fiction
Fiction
No of readers per title (average)
Children's Books Non-fiction Fiction
Children's Books Non-fiction Fiction
No of page views per title (average)
Reading distribution – all categories
Reading distribution – Children’s Books
Most popular sub-categories
What’s missing?
• #1 title in Readly Books: Gone Girl
What’s missing?
• #2 title: Husmanskonst
– Cookbook
– Released in 2006
– Out of print
– Not available as e-book
Limitations of current business models
• Short term publisher profit
• Misaligned motives
• Designed for certain book type – linear book consumption
Going global?
• Small language = broad content service
• Large language = niched services
Untapped opportunities
• Illustrated literature
• Children’s books, e.g. school library
• Non-latin script?
Questions?
(all but ”How many subscribers do you have?”)
Kåre Halldén, CEO & Co-founder
ph: +46 (0)733 624 685
Gustav Winberg, COO & Co-founder
ph: +46 (0)72 187 79 70
Look forward to hearing from you