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The data from Olympic make it very clear that there are enormous variations in the uptake of ebooks across different categories of books, and data from other large trade houses would almost certainly display similar patterns – they would not be identical, but the overall patterns would be broadly similar. How can we explain these differences? Why do some categories display much higher percentages of ebook sales relative to total sales, and higher e/p ratios (that is, ebook sales relative to print sales), than other categories?

We can’t explain the differences in terms of the factors that are commonly associated with ebooks – namely, the convenience of being able to purchase ebooks quickly, easily, any time and any place; the convenience of being able to carry multiple ebooks with you wherever you go – indeed, to carry a small library that has no more weight and bulk than a small paperback; the convenience of being able to vary the size of the typeface; and, of course, the price – the fact that ebooks are generally cheaper than print books (though how much cheaper depends on many factors, as we shall see in a later chapter). These factors don’t explain the differences because they are common to all ebooks – a travel book or cookbook is just as easy to purchase and just as lightweight in ebook format as a romance or a thriller. So the explanation must lie elsewhere.

The most striking difference between the categories that sell well as ebooks and those that don’t is that the former consist of narrative linear text and the latter do not. A romance or a thriller is straight narrative text: you generally start reading on p. 1 and read continuously until you reach the end (or until you give up). The text is structured as a story with a plot that unfolds sequentially, one step at a time, and the reader follows the sequence. By contrast, a cookbook or a travel book or a practical how-to book is not a book that is generally read from beginning to end. It is more like a reference work that is used for particular purposes – to get a particular recipe, to find information about a city or a country you are planning to visit, to accomplish some practical task. These are very different kinds of books that are read, used and/or consulted in very different ways.

We can understand why this matters in terms of the level of ebook uptake by linking it to the user experience. From the viewpoint of the user, reading narrative linear text on an e-reading device like a Kindle is generally a good experience: you can move easily and swiftly from one page to the next, the text flows smoothly and you, the reader, flow with it from beginning to end. This works particularly well for genre fiction: it’s a fast, immersive read and there is nothing in the device itself, and in the way that the text is presented on the screen, that would obstruct you or slow you down as you follow the plot and move towards the denouement. As those in the business say, the ‘form factor’ is good, where ‘form factor’ refers here to the quality of the experience of reading a particular book on a particular device. The experience of reading genre fiction on an e-reading device like a Kindle is probably as good as – maybe even better than, given the ability to change the type size, etc. – the experience of reading the same text on paper.

However, with non-linear texts that may be more practical in character and/or heavily illustrated, the form factor is nowhere near as good. These non-linear texts are not necessarily meant to be read from beginning to end. They may not tell a story that the reader follows, page by page, in a sequential fashion. A non-linear text like a cookbook or a travel book or a practical how-to book may require the reader or user to jump back and forth, getting the information they need and then perhaps dipping in at another point in the text. They might be used more as a reference work that the reader returns to time and again, possibly to the same place or to another part of the text. For non-linear texts of this kind, the experience of reading or using them on an e-reading device like a Kindle is much less appealing than it is with straight linear texts. And if you then add illustrations, the appeal is likely to diminish still further, especially for readers who have e-reading devices that use black and white e-ink technology, like the Kindle.

To say that the form factor for non-linear texts is nowhere near as good as it is for linear texts is not to say that it never will be as good. Someday it might be – indeed, it might be already with some devices and some forms of content. For example, using a custom-built app developed for the iPad can be an exemplary user experience for certain kinds of content. The app format allows for a navigation experience that is non-linear in character: you can dip in and move around using a customized user interface. It also allows for high-resolution colour illustrations, high-quality sound and a much higher level of interactivity – it can be an altogether different kind of user experience from the reading of straight linear text. But creating content of this kind involves challenges and problems of its own and it is by no means clear at this stage whether, and to what extent, it is a viable undertaking. These are issues to which we shall return in the next chapter.

Another factor that is important for explaining the different levels of ebook uptake is what I’ll call the ‘possession value’ of the content. What I mean by this is that some books are the kinds of books that a reader wants to have in order to consume the content, and once the content has been consumed the book itself is redundant: the reader has no particular desire to hold on to the book for the sake of it. Jane, a senior trade publisher, described this as ‘disposable fiction’ – the kind of book that ‘you don’t need to put on your shelf’. On the other hand, there are some books that readers want to own, keep, put on their shelf, return to at a later date, perhaps even display in their living room as a signifier, a symbolic token of who they are and the kinds of books they like and value (or would like others to think that they like and value). These books have a much higher possession value for the reader. For books with a low possession value, the ebook is ideal: once the content has been consumed, the ebook can be deleted – or simply kept in a digital collection where it takes up no physical space, only a small amount of memory. For books with a high possession value, however, the printed book is much more attractive. Printed books have a kind of permanence that digital files lack: file formats and reading devices change with time, but a printed book can be read again at a future date regardless of whether technologies change; printed books can be shared, lent or given to others without restrictions; they can be displayed on a table or a shelf for others to see and pick up and admire; and they have a set of aesthetic traits – a beautiful cover, a well-designed interior, a sensuous materiality – that constitute the printed book as something more than simply a conveyor of content, that constitute it as an aesthetic object that is valued both for its content and for the material form in which that content is conveyed. ‘So the real question is going to be: which books do you need to own and which ones can you simply delete’, continued Jane; ‘and the real trick is going to be figuring out the distinction between the disposable books and the ones you want to keep on your shelf.’ Each reader will figure this out in his or her own way depending on a variety of factors that will affect individuals in different ways, from the extent to which they value certain books as signifiers to the amount of shelf space they have in their office, study or home.

Technology is also an important factor in explaining the different levels of ebook uptake. The categories of books that have high e/p ratios are categories where it is easy and relatively cheap to produce digital files for different devices and upload them into the relevant vendor systems. Older backlist titles can be converted relatively easily and cheaply by sending a hard copy to a third party who will scan the text and turn it into an XML file using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software – the whole process would cost under $200 for a book of 300 pages or less. In the case of new titles, most publishing houses now have a digital workflow that generates multiple file formats as standard outputs of the production process: ebooks are just another set of files that are stored alongside the PDFs and other files that are held by publishers and used by printers to print physical books. Once the systems are in place, it is very inexpensive to produce the ebook files as additional outputs of the production process. In the case of some non-linear and heavily illustrated books, however, it may be much more complicated and costly to produce the kind of digital version that makes for a positive user experience. It may be necessary to go back to the drawing board and recreate the book as a different kind of digital experience – for example, as an app that is organized in an altogether different way. This is not easy to do and success is by no means guaranteed, and this by itself has impeded the process of making available certain categories of books in suitable digital formats.

Figure 1.10 summarizes the main features of what we could call ‘the ebook uptake model’. According to this model, there are four key factors that explain the variations in the uptake of ebooks across different categories of books: textual character, user experience (or form factor), possession value and technology. Taken together, these four factors generate a spectrum of possibilities. At one end of the spectrum is fiction – both genre fiction (romance, mystery, sci-fi, etc.) and general fiction. Genre fiction displayed the most rapid and dramatic shift to digital. Books in these categories are characterized by narrative linear text; they are read quickly and continuously in an immersive reading experience where the e-reading form factor is good; there is a high turnover or consumption rate and the books are often not kept after they are read (or not kept as physical copies); and the digital files are easy and cheap to produce. These are the categories of books where ebooks as a percentage of total sales reached the highest levels at Olympic – between 40 and 60 per cent by 2014, although most have levelled off at between 30 and 40 per cent, with the exception of romance, which remains significantly higher, in the 50–60 per cent range.

Figure 1.10 The ebook uptake model

In the case of general fiction, the switch to digital was not quite so rapid and dramatic as it was with genre fiction, but it wasn’t far behind, and by 2014 the ebook percentage for general fiction at Olympic was very similar to that for sci-fi and fantasy and mystery, although still well below romance. The kinds of books that are included in the category of general fiction share many of the properties of genre fiction. As narrative linear text that is read continuously in an immersive reading experience, these books are easy to read on e-reading devices like the Kindle – the form factor is good. The digital files are also easy and cheap to produce. The one thing that might differentiate some forms of general fiction, like literary fiction, from genre fiction is their possession value. For some readers, literary fiction, and certain books and authors, may have more possession value than genre fiction has – that is, they may be more inclined to want to own these books, and to own books by these authors, and to keep them on their shelves, partly as a way of signalling who they are and of displaying their cultural tastes. They may also be more inclined to give these books as gifts, which is another way of showing their possession value, since a gift is an object that you think someone else might wish to possess, and a physical book functions as a gift in a way that an ebook does not – ebooks make terrible gifts. These factors help to explain why general fiction, which includes literary fiction, is a category where the shift to ebooks has been a little slower than it has been for genre fiction and where the percentage reached in 2015 – 38.7 per cent – was still well below romance.

At the other end of the spectrum are travel books, cookbooks and juvenile books. Books in these categories tend to be non-linear and/or heavily illustrated. They are commonly read more slowly and often discontinuously – in many cases, they are not read in a linear fashion, from beginning to end, but are used more like a reference book that you return to time and again. Turnover is low and the book may be re-used, re-read or consulted again at a later date. In the case of some heavily illustrated books, it may also be displayed on a shelf or a coffee table. Unlike straight narrative text, it is often more difficult and more costly to make the content of these books available in digital formats that are attractive and easy to use. These are the categories of books where ebooks as a percentage of total sales remain at the lowest levels – below 12 per cent for Olympic (excluding the anomalous figures for travel books in 2016).

Between these two extremes are the categories of narrative nonfiction. The label ‘narrative nonfiction’ is a loose notion that includes a diverse range of BISAC nonfiction subject headings, from history, biography and autobiography to health and fitness, religion and self-help. We should not expect all of these categories to display the same ebook pattern, and they don’t. Those categories that are made up of books that are mainly narrative linear text, like biographies, autobiographies and works of narrative history, would be expected to display a higher level of ebook uptake, and this is indeed the case – the speed of ebook uptake was slower for narrative nonfiction than it was for fiction, but by 2015 the percentages for biography/autobiography and history at Olympic were only 5–10 per cent below the percentages for some categories of fiction, including general fiction and sci-fi. It is likely that ‘big ideas’ books, like the books of Malcolm Gladwell or Jaron Lanier, will also display a relatively high level of ebook uptake since they consist mainly of straight narrative text, although they don’t fit neatly into the BISAC categories analysed above. On the other hand, books that are more like reference works that might be read discontinuously and consulted from time to time, such as self-help and family and relationships books, would be expected to display a lower level of ebook uptake – and, again, this is what we find. In most cases, however, narrative nonfiction books display lower levels of ebook uptake than narrative fiction – both genre fiction and general fiction. This can be explained by the fact that the categories of genre fiction and general fiction will contain a higher proportion of books that are: (a) likely to display the character of pure narrative text, without illustrations; (b) likely to be read quickly and continuously in an immersive reading experience; and (c) likely to be turned over quickly as the reader moves on to a new reading experience. The categories of narrative nonfiction, by comparison, will contain a higher proportion of books that are likely to contain illustrations, to be read more slowly and discontinuously as the reader moves back and forth in the text, and to have a lower turnover rate, since the reader may want to hold on to the book with a view to returning to it at some later point in time.

It is worth dwelling for a moment on business and economic books in relation to other categories. As I noted earlier, many commentators in the early 2000s predicted that, when the ebook revolution came, it would be driven primarily by businessmen reading business books on their digital devices – the tech-savvy international jet-setters using spare moments at airports to keep up with the latest literature on business trends. In practice, business and economics books have performed very modestly when it comes to ebook uptake – relatively slow to take off, rising to 20 per cent by 2014 and then falling back to 15 per cent in 2015. This is well below the levels reached by fiction and other categories of narrative nonfiction, like biography/autobiography and history – the commentators in the early 2000s were wide of the mark. When ebooks did eventually take off, the dramatic growth was driven less by businessmen reading business books in airport lounges and more by women reading romance novels on their Kindles (most romance readers are women). Viewed through the lens of the model developed here, the relatively low ebook uptake of business books is not surprising. Many business and economics books are not the kind of books that you would typically read quickly and continuously in an immersive reading experience: they are more likely to be books that you would read more slowly and even discontinuously, where you may want to move back and forth in the text in order to remind yourself of information provided or points made earlier in the text. They are also books that you may want to come back to at a later point, consult again and use more like a reference work than a book that could be quickly read and then discarded. These features would suggest that business and economics books would perform more like self-help books and family and relationship books than fiction, and this is indeed what has happened.