E-books and e-publishing by Samuel Vaknin (essential reading .TXT) 📕

A few months later, with the support of the Rolltronics

Foundation, Wade Roush (former managing editor of eBookNet)

and I founded the Electronic Publishing Resource Center

(EPRC), an industry-sponsored, non-profit organization, and

launched eBookWeb.org on the 4th of July 2001.

I see myself as an e-book evangelist, seeking to inform and

educate the world about electronic publishing. My vision is of

a world where information, entertainment, and books are

readily available to professionals, researchers, students, and

readers everywhere. So, even though I work full time for

Rolltronics doing business development, I continue my daily

efforts to help build the e-Book industry through

eBookWeb.org. The Website now leads in providing news,

information, resources, and community services to the e-media

industries.

Q. This has been a bad year for e-publishing. Leading brands

vanished, industry leaders retreated, technology gurus

bemoaned yet another missed prognosis - that e-books will

dethrone print books. What went wrong?

A. Ever since I first realized the need for portable

information devices, my belief in the future of e-books has

never been shaken. Despite the fact that e-book reality

replaced hype in 2000, and 2001 brought a temporary cyclical

economic downturn, I firmly believe and know that e-books and

e-publishing, or more generally portable information devices,

will play a primary role in the way that people write, create,

design, read, learn, access news and information, communicate,

interact, travel, enjoy art and entertainment, and experience

their world.

It is just taking longer to get there than many had hoped

around the turn of the century. There are still several

factors that need to come together to make e-books a

reality. The hardware is still not there. We need affordable,

light, thin, readable displays with battery life measured in

days or weeks, not hours. To be truly useful and portable, the

devices need to be wireless and perhaps with a backup cellular

connection for remote locales. Next, there needs to be much

more content available for distribution to these devices.

Secure but accessible infrastructure and standards need to be

in place for mass-market appeal. Then, adoption by libraries

and educational institutions will spread the use of e-books at

the grassroots level.

Q. Questions of device compatibility and standards have

plagued the industry from its inception. Will we end up with

an oligopoly of 2-3 formats and 2-3 corresponding readers, or

do you have a different take on the industry’s future?

A. We may be destined to have several formats and platforms,

each of which is used for certain applications and types of

content. The reason is that there are basically four major

players, each with their own plan to dominate the e-Publishing

market.

Despite the fact that, in my opinion, Adobe’s PDF is lacking

as an e-Book format, there are hundreds of millions of

documents in PDF in publishing companies, governments,

corporations, and schools. These will not be replaced

instantly, even if a unified format were agreed upon.

Then there is Microsoft, the 800-pound gorilla, who is slowly

and silently insinuating their reading platform into their

software and Windows operating system. The interoperability of

MS Reader software with MS Office products will make it

possible for many millions of documents to be converted to MS

Reader format.

Of course, there will need to be a portable device to display

all those e-documents. Despite the fact that many Pocket PCs

have been sold, they don’t seem to be a major factor in e-content sales. Now the timing of Microsoft’s big push for the

MS tablet PC begins to make more sense.

The Gemstar format has an established base of customers and

actual dedicated devices, the Rocket eBook and REB1100 and

REB1200s. Gemstar’s format actually has a lot of popular

content going for it, and their displays are much better than

the average computer display. Therefore they are more suitable

for portable reading.

And not surprisingly, the largest sales of electronic content

are going to the Palm Pilot compatible devices. The

established base of many millions of “Palm OS” customers has

been buying hundreds of thousands of e-books each year, and

the e-content sales are growing steadily.

How to unify these four goliaths? The Open eBook Forum’s

standard is good for the formatting of the original document.

Microsoft and Gemstar adhere to the OeBF standard. But each

company has its own way of converting and displaying the OeBF

format in its device or software. So what is the answer? The

only way to rectify all of these heavyweight solutions is to

create a unified standard for displaying electronic content

that is the same across all platforms. Is this possible? That

is a question better answered by the experts at the OeBF…

Q. Some analysts blame the recent bloodbath on a dearth of

good content and wrong pricing. They derisively equate e-publishing with vanity publishing. Do you find these

criticisms correct?

A. The amount of content is growing slowly but steadily.

There are two major problems that contribute to the relative

dearth of titles becoming available. One is that extra

negotiations and agreements are necessary to publish e-books,

or to price them differently from “p-books.” Another is that

since the market still isn’t there, many publishers do not

have the resources, or haven’t budgeted enough money to

aggressively convert content. And many veteran publishers

still produce the final version of a book in a format that is

not easy to convert for electronic publication.

As far as vanity publishing goes, that is not defined by the

medium. Of course electronic publishing makes it easier to

distribute “vanity-published” works. And it is easier to

become self-published. And there are a few vanity publishers

out there, but they usually don’t last long. Still, most

publishers and electronic publishers strive to produce top

quality titles. They know that this is the only long-term

viable business model. They screen and edit the titles that

they publish. They actively promote their authors’ works. In

this sense, a publisher’s name brand will become much more

important to customers than is presently the case.

Q. Traditional print publishers treat e-books (the content,

not the devices) as electronic facsimiles of the print

editions. Can e-books offer a different reading experience? In

what way are they different to print books?

A. E-books that are nothing more than electronic copies of the

print version offer only portability and access as

advantages. Of course e-books can be searched and annotated.

The vision impaired can read with large fonts. Students can

look up words in a built-in dictionary.

But, similar to popular movie DVDs that include many extras,

e-books should really take advantage of the flexibility and

capacity of the electronic medium. Publishers could include

the author’s notes, rough sketches, background, audio or video

from the author or the scene of the books. Reference works

should be electronically updateable via the Internet. Book

club members might be able to send each other their

annotations and comments. Readers might send feedback to the

author and/or publisher. Fans might write and distribute

alternate endings, or add characters or scenes.

Q. E-publishing is at the nexus of sea changes in copyright

laws. Does e-publishing encourage piracy? Have publishers gone

overboard in an effort to preserve their intellectual property

rights? Do you foresee new models of revenues and royalties

and a novel definition of intellectual property?

A. E-publishing does not encourage piracy, but being in

electronic format, it certainly becomes susceptible to the

same kind of piracy that all other kinds of e-content

experience. A number of models, or rather experiments, are

being tried with respect to the level of control of

intellectual property and the associated financial model. So

far, there has not been a clear answer as to which experiment

yields the best results.

One factor is that the market is still in its infancy and

therefore is in a state of flux. The continuum runs from

strict and limited control offered by digital rights

management systems, to free e-content (hopefully) supported by

either stimulating sales of print books, or advertisements. In

the middle are publishers who provide limited security, or

those who use no security and depend on the basic honesty of

most people. As the market grows, we will discover which

models work best in which situations for which types of

content.

Q. E-books were supposed to bring about disintermediation and

foster a direct dialog between author and readership. Have

they succeeded? What is the future of content brokers, such as

publishers and record companies?

A. Yes, there is an enhanced dialog between author and

audience. On eBookWeb.org, we provide space for authors to

have a personal page. These are some of the most popular pages

on the site. On other Websites and through the publications

themselves, authors are coming in closer digital contact with

their readers through email or other forms of dialog. For low

volumes of messages, this is a good thing. But top-selling

writers could not handle email from thousands of dedicated

fans. Even in an electronic world, it is still true that as

one becomes more popular, one has to become less and less

accessible in order to conserve one’s time.

Yes, it is also much easier to become self-published

electronically. However, there is usually a huge difference

between simply being published, and actually reaching a large

audience and reaping significant sales of your title. The Web

continues to grow exponentially, but our time and attention

span remain limited. These two opposing dynamics mean that we

are forced to narrow our attention to a relatively few

reliable content providers, representing an ever smaller

proportion of the total content available.

How can an author be heard above the noise? Get a publisher

who will promote your work. But before that, get an editor or

publisher who will help you polish your work until it shines

brightly enough to gain popularity once it secures the

attention of your audience. The dynamics and demands of the

free market, and the reasons for having publishing companies

do not disappear on the Internet. In fact, they may become

more important as the amount of content and choices continues

to grow.

One important change that I do foresee is that small,

independent niche publishers will make a resurgence due to the

electronic medium. This is definitely a good thing for

readers. Independent publishers who build a reputation for

unique, quality content, will develop a following of faithful

customers over time.

Q. Some marketing pundits believe in viral or buzz marketing.

They advocate giving away free content to generate “buzz”.

They believe that sales will follow. Do you subscribe to this

view?

A. This relates to the question of copyright laws and which

model is best for a particular situation. It also has to do

with previous models on the Web. If the goal is to gain an

audience and fame, then giving it away to hopefully millions

of people is a good idea. The popular dynamic of the Internet

is to build a massive audience by giving away something of

value. Then, one slowly begins to charge for some content or

service, while still providing something for free, to continue

to attract a large following.

The results of the late 1990s indicate a mixed success,

probably due in part to the origins of the Internet, where

everything was free. The expectation was that if it was on the

Net, it was free. The beginnings of commercialism on the Net

in the early 1990’s were met with vehement resistance from the

“old timers” who strongly opposed the commercialization of

their beloved network. Of course, a number of companies such

as eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo, attracted and kept a large

audience. But only a few are truly profitable today.

If the goal is to make maximum profit from each unit of

content that is downloaded, then one