Presentation on subscribtion based services given at Abu Dhabi International Book Fair 2015. The session was part of the ADIBF Academy Future Proof Publisher 2015 Certificate. From the land of Spotify and Skype comes the next digital reading revolution. A year after the launch in his native Sweden, Kåre Halldén will tell the story of how a vision of a reading revolution has come to life with a touch of a fingertip. Kåre Halldén is the CEO and co-founder of Readly Books, Sweden’s leading digital book subscription service. Kåre Halldén has a long and successful entrepreneurial track record from digital business industries. He is also a well-renowned and award-winning Swedish author of fiction and non-fiction literature. The last few years he has written several critically acclaimed crime novels, published by Sweden’s third largest publishing house.

1. Subscription services
ADIBF May 7th 2015
Kåre Halldén
CEO & Co-founder
Readly Books
Stockholm, Sweden

2. The next 45 minutes
• Subscription services
• Small market perspective
• Lessons learned
• Global (?) market view
• Untapped opportunities
• Questions?

3. About Readly Books
• Swedish digital book
subscription service
• All types of books
• Joint venture

4. About Readly
• Streaming Magazine service
• Available in Sweden, UK, US
and Germany
• Books (Sweden only)

5. Our background
• - a Swedish Content Management
System
• Digital publishing for international media
companies, such as…

6. Our background

7. Sweden

8. Sweden

9. Sweden

10. Sweden - Literature

11. Sweden – Book market
• Total value sales about €350M (UK: €1,900M)
• Declining sales last few years

12. Sweden – tech access
• 91% of Swedes have a computer
• 73% of Swedes have a smart phone
• 51% of Swedes have a tablet

13. Sweden – tech access
• 37 % of e-commerce from mobile devices
• 84% of Swedish 5-8 year olds have access to a
tablet

14. Sweden – Ebook market
• About 2%...
– Most of which is library e-lending

15. Why?
• Small language area – ROI difficult for
publishers
• Digital rights slow to adapt
• E-readers never caught on
• No Amazon…

16. The challenge (Sweden)
• Every market needs a catalyst
• The attention economy
• Young people’s reading competence down

17. What we did

18. Timeline
March
2013
March
2014
Readly Magazines
Launch (SE)
Readly Books
Launch (SE)

19. Publisher terms
• Equal terms
• No risk, no obligations
• Revenue share – 70% to publishers
• Better content=more revenue

20. Publisher motivation
• Monetize backlist
• Stimulate growth in digital reading – right
timing
• Free of charge. Zero conversion cost.
• Reading patterns

21. Publishers

22. Customer perspective
• All the benefits of a subscription service:
– Full access everywhere (incl. offline)
– Fixed cost
– Growing catalogue

23. General e-book offering

24. Full family reading service

25. Casual reading
• Cookbooks
• Exercise / dieting
• Music, photography

26. 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

27. Our target group
• People who don’t like to read…

28. What do people read?

29. The Global Subscription Market

30. Ebooks:
The final subscription frontier?

31. Subscription services:
English language

32. Subscription services:
International

33. 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

34. Opportunities

35. Focus on demand, not supply
No of available titles per category:
Children's
Books
Non-fiction
Fiction

36. Focus on demand, not supply
No of page views per category:
Children's
Books
Non-fiction
Fiction

37. Focus on demand, not supply
No of readers per category:
Children's
Books
Non-fiction
Fiction

38. No of readers per title (average)
Children's Books Non-fiction Fiction

39. Children's Books Non-fiction Fiction
No of page views per title (average)

40. Reading distribution – all categories

41. Reading distribution – Children’s Books

42. Most popular sub-categories

43. What’s missing?
• #1 title in Readly Books: Gone Girl

44. What’s missing?
• #2 title: Husmanskonst
– Cookbook
– Released in 2006
– Out of print
– Not available as e-book

45. Limitations of current business
models
• Short term publisher profit
• Misaligned motives
• Designed for certain book type – linear book
consumption

46. Going global?
• Small language = broad content service
• Large language = niched services

47. Untapped opportunities
• Illustrated literature
• Children’s books, e.g. school library
• Non-latin script?

48. Questions?
(all but ”How many subscribers do you have?”)

49. Kåre Halldén, CEO & Co-founder
kare.hallden@readly.com
ph: +46 (0)733 624 685
Gustav Winberg, COO & Co-founder
gustav.winberg@readly.com
ph: +46 (0)72 187 79 70
Look forward to hearing from you