Rebecca Lo
Spurrier, who arrived in Hong Kong from the United Kingdom in 1993. “Our books are crafted — they are designed to be easy to read.”
His observation is that e-books are a popular choice with self-published authors writing genre fiction. And while “in recent years there has been an explosion of self publications”, he points out “one doesn’t replace the other”.
“It’s much easier to put out an e-book rather than a paper one. But as I don’t publish romance, science fiction, pornography or chick lit, e-books aren’t really my thing,” Spurrier adds.
He agrees with Chan that having a website is vital to getting the word out, but he is realistic about the influence of social media. “The traditional methods of publicity still work best,” Spurrier argues.
E-books are hard to sell
Gary Wong Pui-fung co-founded Roundtable in 2006 and currently serves as the Chinese language publishing company’s chief editor. Concentrating on topics such as social science, pop culture and travel, Roundtable launched Edge in 2016, as a niche brand for special interest books such as Oasistrek’s local hiking guide. Last year Roundtable started publishing a monthly newsletter, “linepaper”, featuring different content in its online version.
“We update the online content daily,” says Wong. “The artist John Ho designed a linepaper postcard with a QR code, so that readers can access content on their smart phone through a fun graphic. While most people will go online, we have found that this does not mean people won’t continue to read printed books.”
Wong says that providing online content allows him to make new content available quickly with the option of correcting mistakes afterward when required. He enjoys the immediate reactions that online content evokes, yet says that the online production process is completely different. “If we have something in print, we will put it online,” he states. “Though it may look like quick and simple, we spend a lot of time doing it. The idea is to reach as many people as possible. However, we don’t publish e-books — we don’t feel it is worth the effort as they require a lot of publicity (in order to sell).”
Wong has witnessed major shifts in the industry in the past decade, particularly in distribution. “Books nowadays remain on store shelves for half a year when earlier it would be one to two years,” he says. “At shows such as Hong Kong Book Fair, it is all about how big a discount we can offer. Although attendance to the fair has been rising steadily, visitors mostly go there to find bargains. We still prefer to publish books that people can touch and feel. As a Chinese language publisher, we don’t have any issues with distributing our material through local bookstores.”
“Paper book sales have been stable in the past five to six years,” Spurrier reveals. “Although we don’t see English language book shops in fancy malls in Causeway Bay or Central anymore, it is not a reflection of book sales. E-books seem to have reached a steady equilibrium of 20 percent to 80 percent paper.”
He adds that he’s not expecting to see e-books giving him competition any time soon.