Five Digital Publishing Considerations

We offer five insights into tomorrows world we believe should be considered in any digital publishing strategy.










The Future is Online

Many are still grappling with digital downloads and the various interpretations of epub standards, the myriad of ereader devices and how to price and sell digital titles. However when we look at other media markets we can already see a shift from download to streamed content or content on demand, from ownership to rental or subscription. Spotify and Pandora are changing music from buying tracks to renting music on demand. Video and TV is no different and here the shift is from schedules to viewing on demand.

Some think that books are different but why buy and download when the elibrary is effectively in the cloud? Why download when your GPS can already restrict what you can and can’t read? Why buy a file that is free from any armchair via your local library?

Online technology is now accessible 24x7 and as already proven, your latest read can be cached for continued enjoyment offline and can also be platform supported and not device dependant.

The Future is Agnostic

Today our views, interests and cultural awareness is restricted by what we can find and access, how we access it, what we can do with it and how we use it.

Interestingly, we are shaped more by what we don’t know, than by what we do know.Media is a classic example of where the technology and cultural restriction to information and content can narrow our perspective and thereby who we are.

Someone who grew up in the 50s did not have the access to the rich variety of music that existed then. Their taste was dictated by what and who they knew and could hear. Today, we all have access to just about every conceivable genre, taste and also every manifestation of any work every produced. This opportunity has been created by technology. However, the way in which we discover, access, experience and form opinions on music is varied and often haphazard. As a result everyone’s taste is more eclectic and the music industry now has to support a rich variety of taste. Genre and sub genre are still important but people expect access to a width and depth of range of music.

Merely expecting to sell front list titles forever maybe the quickest form of suicide we can think of.

The Future is Mobile

The most successful reading device to date, the book, is truly mobile.

The future may not be what we have in our pocket today but it will be what we have in our pockets tomorrow. User intuitive interfaces, micro technology and a different approach to mobile are going to shape the devices we will use. Th one thing that is certain is that we will not be tethered to anywhere or anytime. Digital reading will happen just as mobile email, wireless connectivity and digital music, games and video have all happened. The key is mobility. Today we take our phones everywhere and they are switched on 24X7. They go to the beach, in the car, on the underground and as they develop, must become our primary interface to everything. Books are not excluded merely waiting to happen.

The Future is Polar

We have ready seen the entry of the technology omnivores and they aren’t going away.

What is clearly happening is that the economies of digital scope and size are introducing new entrants who care less about books and more about selling devices, advertising, bandwidth and promoting their own brand. They only respect the existing channels if they support their brand and its they who own the transactions, the customer, the information and its their name on the tin.

This is actually creating a new opportunity for those who previously were forgotten and expected to die and small publishers and booksellers now have greater and different opportunities. The challenge is with those who once had the economies in their favour, the chains and larger publishers. Its fast becoming a case of ‘the king is dead long live the king.’

The Future is Vale Added

We have long argued that there is only two people that matter, the author who creates value and the consumer who pays for it. Everyone in between has to earn their place and add value.

This is changing the role of agents, publishers, service providers, distributors, wholesalers, bibliographic and secondary publishers, marketers, booksellers and librarians.

A Year is a Long Time in Today’s Technology World

We now see the inevitable division of content delivery focus, with Google going for the online reading route, others sticking to the offline reading route and Amazon probably trying to cover every conceivable option.

We are already in the device battles with eInk versus the rest. Mobiles versus ereaders and ereaders versus netbooks, laptops etc. We are just starting to see the app battles with Apple versus Andriod, versus Blackberry, versus Symbian versus Microsoft. What is certain is that whatever device you use today it will not be the device you will use, or want to use, in a couple of years.

So where would we place our bets today?

Will the ereaders survive as a one dimensional product, or will we look back fondly at them in a few years time as some quaint Delorean car, a great looking prototype that had to evolve. We hear lots about colour eInk but the demand is today not necessarily tomorrow. What is clear, is that we will see many more eink ‘lookie likies’ some merely rebadged, some exclusive, some heavily financed and some not. The price today is too high, the technology to restrictive and the concept of carrying a library around with you at all time ludicrous in the extreme. Only when we view this technology as throwaway and transient commodity will it change its appeal. This can happen as a result of adoption by a WalMart, Tesco etc or like MP3 it just becomes cheap commodity.

We also still have formats to sort out. Many may man the barricades and demand an epub world as others before them demanded an SGML or an OEB world. The truth is today the best format for most will remain the PDF in the Adobe eBook form, which contrary to popular urban myth works perfectly well on devices such as the Sony Reader. Many feared that reflow was essential and that epub gave us the answer, that the reality is now different. Don’t get us wrong we welcome epub, but it no longer is this issue as times move on.

Will DRM (Digital Rights Management) still be with us in say three years time and if so how will it work is another interesting challenge? We have seen only one aggregator switch to-date, but it gave us an insight to a potential risk. Technology may be replicable moving forward but the encrypted licences needed may be dependant on the original server or service being in place or under contract. Adobe have started to minimise this exposure but it still exists for many who have not opted for a neutral licence service. Watermarking has still to make its mark, but will it coexist with DRM, replace it, or be a nice to have?

We believe the biggest technology choice remains online versus offline. Google have clearly placed their bets online while may others scramble around trying to develop to perfect offline experience. There is no reason why eink should work with online. The issue is the mindset that says we have to own a library and we need to carry it around with us just in case we want to read another book! Is the book market the only one facing this question? We only need to look at Spotify and music, TV and the iPlayer and Hulu, games and even news and magazines. What and how we consume on the move is different to what and how we consume when not on the move. We access and use media and information differently according to the role we are playing at the time and what we want from it and yet we appear to be wanting to shoehorn a one size fits all technology approach into the market.

The one thing that is certain about tomorrow is that it will be different to today.

Steering away from the Rocks

Today the Guardian report on ‘Home copying - burnt into teenage psyche’ and the reality that file copying is bigger than file sharing and together they are redefining the music business. Ironically last week’s Litopia podcast raised the word ‘piracy’ and whether the book industry faced the same problem. We visualize the wreckers who used to steer ships onto the Cornish rocks.

Are we not surprised to hear that research carried out by the University of Hertfordshire, suggests that, home copying remains more popular than file sharing for 18-24-year-olds and that two-thirds of people it surveyed copy five CDs a month from friends. Overall, 95% of the 1,158 people surveyed had engaged in some form of copying. It’s nothing new it’s just easier today. We fondly remember taping radio shows and albums or lending copies to friends. Music like any media is about relating, connecting and sharing. We all read in solitude but we all give or lend our friends books to read. Imagine being branded as a pirate and thief for lending someone a book?

So the question is do we once more attempt to batten down the hatches and drive more copying, open the free floodgates and is there an acceptable middle ground?
Today we live in a material world and our media and our collections reflect ourselves. We all build libraries of stuff that rarely gets aired, let alone taken down off the shelf. But must we own it and it must belong to us. Is this about ownership, unfettered access or rights? What would be the reaction if a track were only to be available online. It could be made available to play at any time on any machine and even from a number of providers but the music will remain online and never downloaded? Will this happen, can it happen, can it be broken? It doesn’t automatically presume that it’s paid for by a direct subscription model, or that it is exclusive to one service. The answer is not the issue, its whether we accept the premise of ‘ as much as we want at any time online’, or we remain wedded to having to own it in order to appreciate it?

We can’t say whether online is the answer but with emerging technologies such as the grid and connectivity anywhere and at anytime, maybe it makes sense. After all, what on earth do you want 200 books on a Kindle for? To us this is like dragging around a cart load of all our physical books just because we own them and can do it. What is the point of an iPod with thousands of tunes if we listen to the same ones? We have a cupboard with hundreds of vinyl albums and can’t remember when we last played one.
Technology always has to work within the social framework and it is impossible to find a solution to one without accepting the other.

Predicting the Online Change

‘Driven by growing popularity of online shopping, lure of discounts offered by retailers, faster delivery, free shipments, and the convenience offered by home shopping, the market for online books is projected to reach US$9.5 billion by 2010.’

So predicts the new "Online Books: A Global Strategic Business Report" published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. The report which costs a cool $3950, reviews online trends and directions in markets such as the US, UK, Italy, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and interestingly refers to all books sold over the internet be they physical or digital. However, it says of the ebook that the ‘emerging ebook concept is a lucrative offshoot of the online book industry. The market segment is expected to catch consumer fancy, and exhibit strong growth patterns in the future.’
Online sales of consumer books are estimated at over US$4.2 billion in 2007 and academic and professional are forecast to generate sales worth about $3 billion in 2008.

Whether we believe the predictions or not it is clear that the purchasing of physical books over the Internet is increasing. The interesting question is at what point it will peak and plateau? Will it peak or continue to erode High Street sales? It is clear that all genre will plot their own path but that the lure of the virtual bookstore coupled with convenience and an increase in ‘search and look inside’ features make it harder to predict. There are now a small number of clear camps selling online; the clicks and mortar chains and bookstores who came late and are still suffering and the online only players who often don’t have the same inventory and cost overheads and are focused and include such as Amazon, Abebooks, Alibris, Books24X7 etc. Finally there are those who are merely acting as ‘white label’ stores and selling others stock on a drop ship basis such as the supermarkets.

Finally, ebooks remain in search of the Grail. Predicting their take up is like predicting climate change, we all know its happening but when, what and how are difficult to predict. What is certain is that publishers must generate the digital content if a market it to exist, merely talking about it and looking at ereaders in a content vacuum is not the answer.