The digital era is finally arriving for books. I wonder if publishers, retailers, and device makers realise the Pandora’s box that they are opening.
Books are one of the last analogue media formats, and as such have proved largely resistant to piracy. Music went digital with the CD in the 1980s while TV and movies became digital with the DVD format a decade later. Both of these physical digital formats opened up those media types to piracy as anyone could create exact digital copies of the content and share them online. The CD and DVD did more than anything else to lead to the piracy explosion, more than the actions of the original Napster, or Pirate Bay, or Kazaa or any other online site.
By comparison, to pirate printed books consumers have to manually scan each page. Then an OCR process creates an approximate copy that needs extremely time consuming and tedious proofing to fix errors. Result – only the most popular titles get scanned and shared online.
eBooks change everything. They open up the book world to the threat of piracy. eBooks provide an already-proofed digital version. Content protection for eBooks using DRM systems is not the answer. The music industry is switching away from DRM for music sales because it doesn’t work and causes legitimate consumers pain. Just one person needs to break the DRM system and then share that knowledge online and then anyone can make copies. eBook companies are still persisting with DRM but I don’t see this lasting here any more than it has for music sales.
There’s a prisoner’s dilmma at work here: Individual publishing companies have the potential to steal competitive advantage if they move first and execute well with eBooks. But for the publishing world as a whole, such individual innovation will accelerate the arrival of the digital era and open up greater piracy.
This risk is not stopping eBook and eReader innovation. The digital era is arriving for books:
Retailers are proving the most innovative, perhaps: Amazon have built on their acquisition of Mobipocket with the launch of first the Kindle eBook reader gadget and then with the Kindle application for the iPhone. Barnes & Noble are moving with their purchase of Fictionwise (which incidentally has a store available inside the Stanza iPhone eBook reader app).
Publishers are innovating too. Penguin see their eBook sales as a key growth area. Harry Potter-publisher Bloomsbury just announced a link up with Exact Editions to offer digital titles to UK libraries (see this item on the Writers and Artists Yearbook blog). Tech publisher O-Reilly and other tech publishers are the most cutting edge non-fiction innovators with an extensive offering. Random House, Harlequin, Pan Macmillan offer a mix of samples and promotional titles on the Stanza app.
Publishing companies I’ve spoken with say digital is inevitable and I think they’re right. But I question if it makes any sense to speed the arrival of the digital book era. There’s one exception. Companies that make eBook reader devices will benefit in any event, whether consumers buy books, read free out of copyright books, or if consumers pirate books.
For everyone else, innovate, but be prepared for the coming digital storm that will overturn existing business models and increase book piracy.
