IFRA

IFRA: Les Echos started selling an E-reader subscription together with a device. Now, you only sell the subscription, due to the difficulties to have under control the expectations and problems related to the device itself. Do you think that in the future, this option (selling only the subscription to a reader and not the device) will be the wisest one?

Olivier Delteil: Yes, I think so. We, as media, experienced that logistics and everything around the delivery of the device is not our business. We don’t know enough about it to include this aspect of the business in our offer. This is why I think it is better to control the content and the offer and not to control the aspects related to the device and the delivery of it.

IFRA: At the moment, users have a number of possibilities in this market to choose from: They can purchase a Kindle and get access to the content available in Amazon. They can purchase the Sony E-reader or an iLiad from iRex and get access to different content. You offer the possibility to people to subscribe to your e-reader edition. But where can they display it? And how do you make sure that the edition is viewed properly in those different devices?

Olivier Delteil: It is difficult for many newspapers to get their content into different platforms due to the different formats that each device supports. For the devices of iRex, for instance, we deliver a kind of PDF. We don’t currently deliver the content to the Sony e-reader, but we could do it in a PRC format. And for the Kindle, we have to deliver another format, a kind of in-between of the two mentioned ones, as it has a proprietary system. As we work with XML as a base for our digital content delivery, we just need to add a kind of stylesheet or specific layer on our content to be able to deliver it to different devices. But I guess that there are other newspapers where the transformation for each format needs to be done manually, which is complicated and time consuming.

IFRA: Do you think this lack of standards will make people wait until the landscape is clear before buying e-readers?

Olivier Delteil: Not really, I don’t think so. But it is true that at the moment buying a concrete device only gets you part of the content available for e-reading devices.

IFRA: What are the major findings and conclusions you can draw after a year of offering a subscription for e-readers?

Olivier Delteil: The major conclusion (so far) is the device needs to offer a wireless connection so people can get the content on the go. Another major finding is that we really need to offer a kind of bundle with specific content that could be delivered to specific audiences. You can’t go at this alone with your own content only.

IFRA: So you think a kiosk model is better than branding a device under the name of a unique media group?

Olivier Delteil: It depends on the media group. If this group can offer general content along with business content and other specific things that might interest people, it might work. But this is not the case of most media groups. Even the biggest one lacks something. Maybe a group like Prisma, in France, which publishes many different magazines, could think about branding an e-reader and delivering only its content, but even in this case, I’m not completely sure that they really can cater the interest of everybody who might want to read in such a device. I think most publishers are more interested in a kind of kiosk model, where readers can find all the publications available in the market and can purchase them according to their preferences. In such a scenario, it will still be possible to have special offers, with different bundles of content sold together. But unfortunately, I don’t think any newspaper has taken steps to favour this model for the moment, because most of them think it requires a huge investment, in terms of both money and resources.

IFRA: As the business model for such devices is still not clear, it seems quite obvious that people will be ready to pay for something that looks similar to the printed paper, a pay-for product. But do you think e-readers will offer special commercial opportunities for advertising purposes?

Olivier Delteil: When we launched almost two years ago, we allowed advertisers to sponsor the device, and in fact, we found companies that were willing to sponsor them. Selling advertising in the e-reader edition is not possible, even today, because we do not have enough audience to sell to our advertisers. But, sponsoring this kind of device gives certain status to the sponsoring companies, as they are identified by the owners of the e-reader as a modern and forward-looking company.

IFRA: Do you think e-reader subscriptions will surpass print copies at some point? Will e-reading complement paper reading or substitute it?

Olivier Delteil: People who used to read our information in another device want to read also in the e-reader, so this brings me back to Riepl’s Law, which says that new media do not substitute old media but complement them. I mean the printed paper is so important for some segments of our audience that I don’t think that it will disappear soon.

IFRA: Do you think the launch of new devices (Plastic Logic, Bridgestone...) with bigger displays and even colour (which will be a must in the future) might affect the e-reading market?

Olivier Delteil: Yes, I think so. I hope so. I think e-readers with bigger displays, like the ones that Plastic Logic or Hearst might be thinking of, could have an impact in the market and give the "actors" in the market a better view of how people could read a newspaper in such a device.