In a February 2018 interview, then-Hachette Livre CEO Arnaud Nourry called the conventional ebook “a stupid product” because, in his view, it copied print without offering enough that was distinctively digital. He was criticizing publishers’ digital strategy—not rejecting ebooks: he said Hachette was not against them and argued that ebooks should cost less than print.
What did Nourry mean by “the ebook is a stupid product”?
Nourry made the remark in an interview with Scroll.in about Hachette’s plans in India and the wider future of digital publishing. He 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.” Scroll.in’s interview was published on February 17, 2018; The Guardian’s contemporaneous report reproduced the remarks.
His target was the ordinary commercial ebook as he saw it: a digital version of a printed book, rather than a work designed to use a screen’s capabilities. He was making a judgment about the industry’s products and choices, not establishing that every ebook is creatively limited.
Was Nourry against ebooks?
No. The Guardian reported that Nourry explicitly said Hachette was not against ebooks. His criticism was that publishers had not made digital publishing distinctive or successful enough. “We, as publishers, have not done a great job going digital,” he said, describing attempts at enriched ebooks, apps, and websites as yielding “one or two successes among a hundred failures.” That was his rhetorical characterization of the industry’s experience, not the finding of a measured study. The Guardian also quoted him saying publishers lacked some of the skills needed to create digital experiences beyond designing a manuscript for a flat page.
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He also argued for a price difference. “People have to pay a price that is about 40% lower than the print price. And it works,” he said, according to The Guardian. This was Nourry’s 2018 position on pricing, not a verified average, a universal pricing rule, or a statement about ebook prices today.
Can an ebook offer more than a digital copy of print?
Yes, digital publishing has included experiments with multimedia and interactive features. A 2018 filing by Authors Alliance and co-signers in a U.S. Copyright Office proceeding pointed to enhanced editions and independent platforms for interactive works. Those examples establish that such formats existed; they do not establish how common they were, whether they were commercially successful, or whether the products remain available. The filing is evidence of examples and arguments, not a current product directory.
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Scholarship on ebook history offers a useful distinction: digital books are not just files. Their experience also depends on devices, software, connectivity, and services. Commercial ebooks often emphasized practical reproduction of print, while designers and inventors explored other ways of reading on screens. Rowberry’s history of the ebook helps explain why the same-as-print quality Nourry criticized can also be useful: a familiar, readable page may be exactly what someone wants.
What did Nourry’s ebook-market estimates refer to?
In the 2018 interview, Nourry estimated that ebooks represented about 20% of the total book market in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 5%–7% in other markets. These were his estimates at that time, not current statistics. The reviewed sources do not establish a current, comparable ebook share by geography, so the figures should not be used to describe today’s market.
What the argument means for readers
Nourry’s statement was a challenge to publishers: should they simply reproduce a printed page, or create digital features that genuinely improve a book? The answer depends on the work and the reader. A text-focused ebook may be valuable precisely because it preserves a familiar reading experience; multimedia or interactivity matters when it serves the content rather than being added for its own sake. Digital reading also depends on devices and platform services, unlike a printed copy.
His 2018 comments capture one publisher’s critique of the industry’s digital ambitions. They do not show that ebooks as a format lack creative possibilities, nor do they settle whether enhanced formats can succeed at scale.
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