Waterstones completes exit from e-books market
Britain's largest bookseller stops selling digital books and signs deal with Kobo
Waterstones is to pull out of e-books after announcing that from this summer onwards it will refer its online customers instead to the Japanese digital book specialist Kobo.
Existing online customers were notified of the impending change at the weekend. From 14 July, they will receive email instructions informing them how to transfer their online library, the BBC notes. New customers will simply be redirected to the Kobo website.
Waterstones's chief executive James Daunt told The Bookseller he was making the move because the store's e-books offering was not "to the standard or the ability I would like”. He says the likelihood that Waterstones could overhaul its digital sales in order to compete with the likes of Amazon was "increasingly remote".
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Daunt says the store will not suffer a serious financial hit as the business sold "really not very many" e-books and would take a cut of all new sales referred through its website.
The move marks the end of an unsuccessful foray into e-books for Waterstones, which was one of the first book stores to try to get ahead of the digital revolution when it started selling Sony e-readers back in 2008.
Since then, Engadget notes, Waterstones has tried to launch its own device and then welcomed Amazon's Kindle, before reversing the trend last October by removing stocks of the devices from most stores.
Others too have been leaving the sector as Apple and, to a lesser extent, Kobo come to dominate. Barnes & Noble, the US bookseller, pulled the plug on its Nook service in March, while last year and the year before respectively Tesco and Sony closed their platforms and switched readers to Kobo.
Waterstones has been focusing instead on overhauling its physical stores, introducing a membership scheme and improving the customer experience through initiatives such as the roll-out of in-store coffee shops.
Last year, after years in the doldrums, the company reported an increase in sales of one per cent to £378m and profits of £5.4m.
This comes at a time when the wider market is also apparently beginning to turn back to physical books, with sales up in the past two years according to Nielsen research. In contrast, consumer e-book sales fell by 11 per cent to £245m last year, the first fall since they arrived on the scene.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
One great cookbook: 'The Zuni Café Cookbook' by Judy Rodgers
The Week Recommends A tome that teaches you to both recreate recipes and think like a cook
By Scott Hocker, The Week US Published
-
Stephen Miller is '100% loyal' to Donald Trump
He is also the architect of Trump's mass-deportation plans
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Crossword: November 14, 2024
The Week's daily crossword
By The Week Staff Published
-
Labour shortages: the ‘most urgent problem’ facing the UK economy right now
Speed Read Britain is currently in the grip of an ‘employment crisis’
By The Week Staff Published
-
Will the energy war hurt Europe more than Russia?
Speed Read European Commission proposes a total ban on Russian oil
By The Week Staff Published
-
Will Elon Musk manage to take over Twitter?
Speed Read The world’s richest man has launched a hostile takeover bid worth $43bn
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Shoppers urged not to buy into dodgy Black Friday deals
Speed Read Consumer watchdog says better prices can be had on most of the so-called bargain offers
By The Week Staff Published
-
Ryanair: readying for departure from London
Speed Read Plans to delist Ryanair from the London Stock Exchange could spell ‘another blow’ to the ‘dwindling’ London market
By The Week Staff Published
-
Out of fashion: Asos ‘curse’ has struck again
Speed Read Share price tumbles following the departure of CEO Nick Beighton
By The Week Staff Published
-
Universal Music’s blockbuster listing: don’t stop me now…
Speed Read Investors are betting heavily that the ‘boom in music streaming’, which has transformed Universal’s fortunes, ‘still has a long way to go’
By The Week Staff Published
-
EasyJet/Wizz: battle for air supremacy
Speed Read ‘Wizz’s cheeky takeover bid will have come as a blow to the corporate ego’
By The Week Staff Published