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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallIn a February 2018 interview, Arnaud Nourry, then chief executive of Hachette Livre, called the ebook “a stupid product” because he believed conventional ebooks mostly copied print instead of using digital media to create a distinct reading experience. He was criticizing how publishers had handled digital publishing—not declaring that Hachette opposed ebooks or that every digital book must be creatively limited.
What Nourry said about ebooks
Speaking with Harsimran Gill of Scroll.in in an interview published February 17, 2018, Nourry said: “The ebook is a stupid product. It is exactly the same as print, except it’s electronic. There is no creativity, no enhancement, no real digital experience.” The Guardian quoted the same interview in its contemporaneous report on his remarks.
His point was about the conventional commercial ebook as he saw it: a digital version of a book designed for a flat printed page. He argued that publishers had not made much of the possibilities beyond that format. “We, as publishers, have not done a great job going digital,” he said, describing attempts at enhanced ebooks, apps, and websites as yielding “one or two successes among a hundred failures.” That was his rhetorical assessment of the industry, not a measured survey of products or outcomes.
Was he against ebooks?
No. The Guardian reported that Nourry explicitly said Hachette was not against ebooks. He regarded them as a part of publishing, but argued they should cost less than print books. “People have to pay a price that is about 40% lower than the print price. And it works,” he said. That was Nourry’s proposed price relationship in 2018, not a verified average or a rule for ebook prices today.
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He also framed price control as a way to protect the wider book ecosystem. The distinction matters: his objection was to an ebook that simply reproduces print without offering a sufficiently distinct digital experience, not to readers choosing electronic books.
What he thought publishers were missing
Nourry did not say that digital books could never become more than electronic copies. He said he believed publishers could invent something new with their content and digital properties, but lacked the skills and talent to do so. In the interview, he attributed that gap to an industry accustomed to selecting manuscripts and designing them “on a flat page.”
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That criticism identifies a challenge of craft and organization as much as a technical one. A digital-native work may require decisions about software, interaction, audio or video, and how those elements serve the reading experience. Simply adding features does not guarantee a better book; the question is whether they make the work more meaningful or useful.
Can digital books do more than replicate print?
Yes, at least in the sense that publishers and creators have experimented with multimedia and interactive forms. A 2018 filing by Authors Alliance and co-signers in a U.S. Copyright Office proceeding cited examples of enhanced editions and independent platforms for interactive works. Those examples show that such formats existed, but do not establish how common they were, whether they succeeded commercially, or whether those particular products remain available.
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Scholarship also puts Nourry’s complaint in historical context. Simone Murray Rowberry’s history of ebooks describes them not only as files but as systems involving devices, software, connectivity, and services. Commercial ebook design often emphasized practical reproduction of print, even as designers and inventors explored ways screens might support different kinds of reading. That distinction leaves room for both observations: a standard ebook can closely resemble print, while digital publishing can also experiment with other forms.
For some readers, similarity to print is a feature rather than a failure. E-readers and ebook platforms made books portable and practical on screens, and electronic paper displays were developed to support sustained reading. A familiar page-like experience may be the right choice when the goal is to read a text without distraction. Multimedia and interactivity matter only when they serve the work.
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How to read Nourry’s market figures
Nourry also offered estimates of ebook market share in the 2018 interview. These are his estimates from that time, not current statistics:
| Market | Nourry’s 2018 estimate of ebook share |
|---|---|
| United States and United Kingdom | About 20% of the total book market |
| Other markets | 5%–7% of the total book market |
The interview does not make these figures a current, comparable measure of ebook adoption by country. They should be understood as Nourry’s characterization of the market in 2018.
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The headline captures Nourry’s frustration with ebooks that mimic print and with publishers’ limited success in building distinctive digital products. It can mislead if read as a blanket rejection of ebooks: he said Hachette was not against them, accepted their place in publishing, and argued that they should be priced below print. His broader challenge to publishers was to explore digital formats with more imagination, while recognizing that an added feature is not automatically an enhancement.
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