 |
- Column - All About E-books - |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
October 15/2000 It's Still an Uphill Battle By Ebook Editor Lisa Eagleson-Roever In my last article, I discussed the hopeful signs of maturity in the e-book industry. For the sake of balance, here's a rebuttal: despite positive steps, the industry is still climbing uphill. E-books don't fall into the "common knowledge" category, the average book buyer can't afford an e-book reading device, and even those who like e-books would still rather read a hardcopy. And worse yet, sites are popping up that give readers free illegal copies of e-books, which does nothing to encourage writers to try the medium. There have been advances, but the predictions surrounding the theme of "e-books are the future" don't seem to be coming true as rapidly as the prognosticators claimed. In its annual Consumer Book Buying Study, Publishers Weekly and Book Expo America found that while two-thirds of on-line book buyers surveyed knew what an e-book was, only 32% of those said they were likely to purchase an e-book in the next twelve months. Only 11% of those who knew what an e-book was (or about 7% of all on-line book buyers surveyed) said they had either read or purchased an e-book in the past. Nora Rawlinson, editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly, summed it up (for me, at least) in PW Daily: "The latest Rocket eBook instrument is very good, better than sitting at your computer, but it still pales next to the 500-year-old technology of the printed book." I like the concept of e-books, but I'm waiting patiently for a better execution of the concept. Thomson Multimedia and RCA are set to release products touted as the "replacement for the Rocket eBook." Hear, hear - you might say, as Rocket eBooks are not considered market-friendly because of their high price and lower-than-wished-for battery lives. Unfortunately, these new products may not satisfy the need. Both low-end models are more expensive than the currently available Rocket eBook models. So much for appealing to the folks who read the most, eh? Not appealing to authors is #Bookwarez. According to a report on Wired.com, #Bookwarez is perhaps the largest site on the World Wide Web offering links to free copies of e-books. These are not legal free copies, and publishers are investigating. No doubt authors of the popular books being pirated (Angela's Ashes and The Green Mile among them) are not happy to discover their works are being stolen, and I'm sure others who are happy to have gone unnoticed by #Bookwarez will pause before considering the e-book format. Another sign that e-publishers have an uphill battle is that even Stephen King is having troubles selling The Plant. Although copies of the first three installments were downloaded at a healthy rate, many buyers were caught paying for one copy and downloading two or three, so as to have the chapters in more than one format. It's equivalent to buying a hardcover copy and then stealing the audiocassettes and a paperback. According to a report in eBooknet Weekly News, only 1% of those who downloaded Riding the Bullet actually read the book. Could the multiple downloads of The Plant mean that people are simply gathering them as electronic collectibles? Even those in-the-know don't seem to understand how e-books are supposed to work, and that's not a good sign for the industry either. If e-book publishers can't get respected members of the publishing community to speak well of them as a whole, eventually they will face a credibility problem with all but the most adventurous of readers and writers - which could keep e-books on the fringe of the industry. The September 26, 2000 issue of PW Daily reported that a New Yorker-hosted celebrity panel on e-books (ominously titled Download or Die) immediately drew 'us-against-them' battle lines with the assumption that e-books are intended to replace print books entirely, and that the e-book industry will be populated by unskilled e-publishers rushing poor quality manuscripts to the market. It appears the panel did not make progress in any direction, instead arguing around different aspects of the issue, each one focusing on his or her own business interests. Just so you don't think I've turned into a Gloomy Gloria, let me mention some positive signs I saw recently also. There are those in the publishing industry willing to hedge their bets. For example, Taylor and Francis, an international academic publisher, has contracted Versaware to convert its 17,000 title backlist (and those of its imprints) to PDF, HTML, Microsoft Reader, Rocket eBook, Softbook, and Glassbook formats. Also, Lightning Source has entered into partnerships with well-known traditional print publishers to provide such services as digitization, e-storage, print-on-demand, and e-books. (Customers include St. Martin's Press; Henry Holt; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Picador; Tor; Forge; and Simon and Schuster.) And McGraw-Hill has opened its own e-book store at www.ebooks.mcgraw-hill.com, while its Primis Custom Publishing division has recently offered a tool that enables professors to design their own e-textbooks and accompanying on-line course materials using a database of over 230,000 textbook pages. Competition by those in the purely electronic world is taking place on increasingly more familiar platforms. Adobe Systems, placing itself in direct competition with Microsoft (which has formed a partnership with Amazon.com), has bought Glassbook and formed a similar partnership with B&N.com to make e-books available on-line. This could be an interesting battle to follow. Although Microsoft claims 500,000 downloads of Microsoft Reader, Adobe can point out that 180 million copies of various forms of Acrobat (the most popular being the freely distributed PDF reader Acrobat Reader) have been downloaded. Also note that for those who just have to have a print copy, Adobe Acrobat allows e-books to be printed. Microsoft Reader does not. Yes, it's still an uphill battle, yet it appears the slope of the hill may be lessening. Will e-books take over the world? I doubt that - at least not the world we know today. Could e-books make parts of our lives a whole lot more interesting? Oh, yes, indeed they could. --- Sources of information for this article - From PW Daily for Booksellers, the following articles and news items: ---"E-Wave of the Future: Versaware to Digitize Taylor & Francis Titles" - July 14, 2000, Calvin Reid. ---"The Plant's Sturdy Roots," Special Issue - July 24, 2000. ---"Douglas Clegg's Multimedia-linked E-Novel Debuts" - July 28, 2000. ---"More E-Advances: Lightning Source and PubEasy Add Clients" - August 8, 2000. ---"Adobe Enters E-book Market: Buys Glassbook, Partners with B&N.com" - August 19, 2000. ---"McGraw-Hill Opens E-book Store" - August 19, 2000. ---"Successor to the Rocket eBook Named" - August 19, 2000. ---"Seattle's Power Couple: Amazon.com and Microsoft to Launch E-bookstore" - August 28, 2000, Calvin Reid. ---"King Grows Reluctant to Nourish Wilting 'Plant' " - September 13, 2000, Jim Milliot. ---"Thomson Unveils Two Too Expensive E-Book Readers" - September 20, 2000. ---"PW-BEA Study: Online Book Buying and Interest in E-Books Grow" - September 22, 2000. ---"More on E-Piracy: Publishers Investigate Book Bandit Central" - September 22, 2000. ---"Download or Die: Glitterati Discuss the Future of E-books" - September 26, 2000. From eBooknet Weekly News, the following news items: ---"The King of eBooks?" - July 28, 2000. ---"RCA Previews Successors to Rocket eBook, SoftBook Reader" - August 25, 2000. ---"In eBook Binge, Adobe Gobbles Glassbook, Partners with Barnes & Noble, iUniverse" - September 1, 2000. ---"Microsoft Reader Will Be 'Preferred Format' at New Amazon.com eBook Store" - September 1, 2000. ---"Successor to Rocket eBook Will Cost About $300, New York Times Reports" - September 21, 2000. From eBC's ePUB Market Update, the following news item: ---"Exciting Trend Continues" - September 20, 2000. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||