Jisui: Digital Book DIY

Who has not copied music and films for personal use? We can all remember taping radio music, cutting cassettes off vinyl, copying CDs and downloading files from the likes of Kazaa. We all tape TV or now simply watch it on demand. We have all updated our media libraries as we migrate to new technology. So what is different about taking a book and scanning it to create your own digital file?

"Jisui," ("cooking one's own meals"), is a new digital book community in Japan which is creating its own digital copies of books. The process is no different to what many publishers do with their back list titles and involves scanning pages of a book through a scanner. The technology has been around for years, so what has changed and why would you break a book to just create a digital copy?

In June, Internet research company Macromill Inc. surveyed 300 iPad owners in Japan and found that 20% had digitized their own books and a further 30% were interested in doing so. The reasons given by the respondents were that, digital versions of the books were not available and that it was easier to read the digital versions of books than paper books whose pages had faded. The numbers surveyed may appear small but we still have to ask what has changed and why do these people feel the urge to perform digital DIY?

First they now have an ereader they like in the iPad and we must remember that the survey was focused on iPad owners. Secondly if there is a dearth of digital content people will always create it themselves. Thirdly the scanning technology has improved and has become cheaper. Forth creating an image file such as PDF from a scan is simple.

The combination of these factors has resulted in an increase in sales of related products. PFU, which is part of the Fujitsu Group, said its June sales of duplex scanners were double that of May. It is claimed that Amazon also saw orders of scanners and paper cutters double from April to June. The interest has even resulted in major electronics retailer Yodobashi Camera setting up an in-store demonstration area to show customers how to digitise books. Another company Jissen, even offers a service to cut books into loose pages for 110 yen per copy and claim to now cut between 1,000 and 1,500 books a day.

Digitization of books by the purchaser for "personal use" is permitted under Japanese copyright law as long as the individual does the reproduction themselves.

Some would suggest that copyright law is out of step with current times. Others that the practise is OK but only if it is ‘for personal use’ The professional pirate has had the capability to do this for years and can even convert captured text into any format and re typeset it for print. Until now digitisation was presumed too expensive for individuals and they didn’t have devices that made digitisation worth the effort. It is not the professional pirate that is the new threat but the individual.

"Jisui" may be confined in the main to Japan today, but it easy to see communities created to follow its example and the obvious outcome will be the sharing of files.

Fighting file sharing on a service is one thing but is often struggling under the reactive take down notices and first finding the content. Fighting copying and sharing content at the local community and friend level is completely different. As the publishing world locks up its digital files behind DRM encryption it be could merely encouraging the individual to bypass that source and go the original book and scan it. After all that is what happening with music until sense prevailed and MP3 was widely accepted.

We may think this is small and insignificant and that we should to focus on locking up the digital files whilst we also continue to fight low prices and make it expensive in the mind of the consumer. We perhaps need to be careful what we wish for and instead consider making ebooks really cheap, available and DRM free. Soft DRM, digital watermarking, makes far more sense than the current clunky hard DRM. But we appear to be hell bent on encouraging consumers to consider a DIY future.

A group of students only need a scanner and one textbook.

source http://mainichi.jp/universalon/clipping/news/20100820dde001040002000c.html

Japan Faces Digital Black Ships?

We naturally assume that the Japanese market is far more advance digitally than the West but that is not the case. The lead that they have show in Keitai novels and Manga comics may be ahead of the curve but there are salient lessons to be learnt there. The Japanese market itself is defined differently with magazines, books and comics often all together within the same channel and and figures. In 1997 the market was some $30 billion US, today it is under $20Billion, so in just over 10 years it has shrunk 30%.

Japan has a fixed price system which is controlled under a network of wholesalers. The major publishers are currently experiencing a continual downturn in both sales and profit and most marked is the drop in comic book. Bookstores over the last 10 years have dropped by 20% from around 21 thousand to 16,400.

So will the new digital age stimulate the market or cause further collapse? Will it open up trade just as Commander Perry did with his Black Ships some 150 years ago?
We listened with interest to Hiroshi Kagawa, Publisher and owner of IBC Publishing at the recent Seoul International Book Fair.

One aspect that we didn’t respect was the Asian approach and attitude to copyright and how it differed to that in the West. Kagawa talked about the obvious issues he faces operating in a country with 50 years rules and a global market that has 70 year ones. Most interesting was his insight into contracts and the fact that they are drawn up after the publication not before, are based on a few principles and not buried in detail and specifics and that they are based on relationships. He asked whether Japan could manage the transition to the contract world of the West and if not the potential implications.

However they appear not to be waiting for the Black Ships and Kodansha, a major publisher, is planning to create 20,000 e titles this year and already have some 7,000. Major publishers have formed an association of epublishing called Denshokyo.

Kagawa closed by stating that we have created a digital tangled web where we are in danger of loosing the reader. He believes we need to find new ways of untangling the web and creating simpler and short digital entry to content. ‘In a digital era we may lose our patence and endurance to read heavy content.’

Are 'Black Ships' Entering Japan?

On July 8th 1853 four black hulled US Navy ships sailed into Edo Bay in Japan under the command of Commodore Mathew Perry. The ‘Black Ships’ demanded the opening up of trade. When asked to leave Perry refused and demanded permission to present a letter from President Millard Fillmore, threatening force if he was denied. Perry even demonstrated US naval power by attacking several building with cannon fire. The Japanese government was forced to let Perry come ashore to avoid further naval bombardment by his superior and modern weaponary.

The term "Black Ships", in Japan, came to symbolise a threat imposed by Western technology.

Japanese communications minister, Kazuhiro Haraguchi and the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan have now compared Apple’s iPad to the “Black Ships” that opened up Japan some 157 years ago.

Today ebook sales in Japan are significantly higher than even the US but are mainly manga comics and keitia novels on mobile phones. The mobile phone rules in Japan and even Sony and Panasonic have abandoned their ereader business in 2007 and 2008 respectfully. Amazon’s Kindle has not entered the market and no Japanese-language titles are available from its US site.

Publishers everywhere are wary on the implications of not the iPad itself but its pricing and how that may affect negotiations with authors and distributors. The Japanese publishing market is very ‘closed’ with publishers already setting retail prices and preventing discounting and with printing, publishing and distribution being strongly interconnected. So why fear these new ‘Black Ships’?

The issue is that Japan is once again very nervous of the sight of US traders that can’t be repelled and will change their way of doing business. The Stability and depth of the market is down to its economic balance and the Japanese publishers clearly feel that the Apple effect could imbalance the trade by forcing US pricing models on them. However Japan is suffering a steady decline in books and magazines revenues so will these new ‘Black Ships’ open up the market? We also have to respect that Japanese consumers, are truly mobile centric and that a tablet may be too big for them to swallow on the move.

source BusinessWeek

Page Turning Japanese?

A group of 31 Japanese publishers, including Kodansha and Shinchosha, have formed an electronic book publishers association, the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan. The new organization will research and collect information on the industry and is aimed at forming a collective view and policies on digital issues. The move also comes ahead of the anticipated release of a Japanese version of Amazon's Kindle.

It aims are laudable and are to; form agreements on the securing of rights and profits for authors; providing convenience for readers; and the coexistence of print and digitalized works. They plan to address contract issues, conduct reader surveys, review the formatting of electronic book data, and research electronic reading devices and software.

The association was formed under the Denshi Bunko Shuppansha-kai organization that operates "Denshi Bunko Paburi," an electronic book retail site founded by 13 companies in 2000.