SINGAPORE — “Skoob? Who’s that?”

That was my friend’s response after I had told her that another Singapore e-bookstore had announced it was closing shop. That my friend had no idea what Skoob was and promptly dismissed its demise with a shrug spoke volumes.

My friend, after all, is a voracious reader and hardcore buyer of books. Even if she’s staunchly traditionalist, sticking only to “conventional books” (aka those made from wood pulp), I had hoped to see a wee bit more dismay from someone who was visibly upset at the closure of Page One and Borders before. It’s one less place to get books, right?

Here’s the thing: The presence of three homegrown e-bookstores earlier this year - MediaCorp’s ilovebooks.com, SingTel’s Skoob and StarHub’s Booktique - was supposed to signal the next step in Singapore’s reading culture and book publishing industry. Everyone was finally getting onboard the digital book revolution.

NOT COMMERCIALLY VIABLE?

But the digital book revolution has had some setbacks. The fact that two of the e-bookstores have closed within months of each other — other than Skoob, ilovebooks.com closed in May — is something worth mulling over. And the reason for the demise of ilovebooks.com and Skoob was because the ventures weren’t commercially viable.

Of course, some have already commented that the parties involved had pulled out way too soon. Particularly when it concerns the relatively new digital aspect of a business that’s already considered a slow-burner in the first place.

It’s doubly baffling especially when you consider the huge potential. Aside from the global boom of the e-book market, Singapore itself has the ready presence of a theoretically winning combo: A population that’s so plugged in and has an extremely healthy reading habit — whatever the platform is.

“There’s a lot of e-reading going on outside the local e-bookstores, through NLB, through ‘offshore’ accounts, and via piracy,” Peter Schoppert, Director of NUS Press, told TODAY.

Yes, whether it’s borrowing from the library; going around frustrating local restrictions to buy books from Amazon, iBooks and Kobo (the first two are unavailable here but the latter accepts purchases from Singapore); or, well, illegal downloading and sharing, there’s a lot of e-reading going on.

Just not a lot of e-buying on local e-bookstores, it seems.

What should be done then? A number of points have already been brought up elsewhere.

One major concern has been pricing issues. Potential customers don’t seem to be biting because of uncompetitive prices. Why buy something that is essentially ephemeral digital data at the same - or nearly the same - price as a physically-tangible book?

This is somewhat related to publishers’ attitude towards e-books. Understandably, having been long entrenched in the business model of print, they may still continue to grapple with this new platform with some resistance.

WHAT IS A BOOK?

But beyond the nuts and bolts, consumers and publishers perhaps need to go back and examine some basic issues. First and foremost is the very notion of the book. What makes an e-book less of a book than its conventional and most popular form, the paperback? The latter, after all, only came about in 1935, when Allen Lane hit upon the idea of making mass-produced, cheap books and so unleashed all those portable Penguins.

Second, it’s becoming more and more difficult to look at the book industry in a bubble as its fate becomes deeply intertwined with other forms of mass media, with movies being the most obvious (like that pop culture hybrid that is the Harry Potter franchise).

You can’t avoid it. Amazon, while starting off as an online bookstore has diversified to sell other things (yes, even e-books). iBooks is just part of the entire Apple juggernaut. Closer to home, the three main Singapore e-bookstores were or are owned by media companies which, it could be argued, are not in the business of selling books, but digital content in its many forms.

The idea of the “book” as a thing to hold in your hands is a psychological barrier that needs to be overcome eventually. Before, everything was clear cut. A “conventional” book is form-and-content materialised. But with ebooks, form and content have been pulled apart as complementary but distinct elements — the “data” and the platform - whether it is an e-book reader or a tablet.

And there’s another barrier we could do without: Restricted access to the wealth of material available on Amazon or iBooks and the unavailability of various e-book readers. The reverse is a seamless world where you can easily purchase an e-book at competitive prices and read it anywhere using anything.

Yesterday's launch of Google's e-bookstore is an intriguing and encouraging sign, but we have yet to see what it brings to the table in Singapore.

HOME ADVANTAGE

How is opening Singapore to these e-bookstore giants any good for homegrown e-bookstores that didn’t do well without them looming the first time around?

It’s a disconnect that Schoppert acknowledged. “As it’s currently organised, the e-book business depends on network effects and favours the bigger, global players. (But) at the same time, we’re all anxious to create local spaces for books and a viable local publishing ecosystem that works in digital as well as print,” he said.

He pointed out the need to have “credible locally-based players”. “Publishers prefer a good mix of credible retailers,” he said.

Indeed, publishers like Monsoon Books have said they rely on online stores like Amazon for sales of their e-books rather than homegrown e-bookstores. So surely their presence would be welcomed by the publishers themselves.

But at the same time, Singapore e-bookstores, which are arguably smaller in size, could in fact be well positioned, in terms of flexibility, to adapt to its main target audience.

And in this, Booktique, the last one standing, has the home advantage. Much of its gameplan has not veered away much from that of the two defunct e-bookstores — the optimism about the growth potential of the digital publishing industry in Singapore, working closely with publishers regarding pricing.

“We will (also) continue to explore the use of other digital publishing platforms to offer consumers the flexibility of accessing digital content anytime, anywhere,” added Stephen Lee, head of StarHub’s i3 (Innovation, Investment, Incubation).

But it is the potential of social interactivity that could be what will give a homegrown e-bookstore a leg-up. This is nothing new — you have Amazon’s popular (and for a time, contentious) reviews section and ilovebooks.com had its very active blog.

But Booktique has recently taken it a step further — organising its own local short story writing contest.

And the winning entries get published.

In an e-book.