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Looking at the E-Book Market Paul Hilts -- 11/20/00 Despite small revenues so far, e-books generate a lot of discussion at the e-Book World confab
Handheld devices, display formats, digital rights management, marketing, consumer research and much more all came under scrutiny as e-publishing pundits and professionals gathered to poke, prod and examine the nascent industry at Penton Media's first e-Book World Conference and Exposition. E-Book World, November 6-7, capped a series of New York City-set electronic publishing shows that began in late October with Internet World, and carried on through Reed Exposition's ePub Expo at the end of October. Besides the usual headscratching over how e-publishing will become a viable business, there were a number of announcements. Microsoft hyped a new, still-in-development digital tablet device and B&N rushed to embrace print-on-demand technology. Michael Wolff, New York magazine columnist, bestselling author (Burn Rate) and former e-publisher (Personal Net Guides series from Wolff New Media) chaired the conference, serving as both a persistent questioner and panelist. The sessions were not as technical as those at other meetings, and mostly attempted to better define the evolving relationships among author, publisher and consumer in the developing e-book business. "Is the e-book business the book business?" was both a show theme and a panel topic, and the attendees looked closely at whether the e-publishing business will develop from current practices or make a clean break with the publishing industry's past.
How & What We Read The panel on "How We Read" expanded on Sarnoff's points, noting that consumers will continue to read most things as they have in the past, and speculated on what consumers might do differently in the future. Panelist Roger Black, well-known print and digital designer, said that these days, "people don't read; they skim for content." He agreed with Wolff that newspapers and magazines, dependent on timeliness and facing postal increases, are most at risk. But Maggie Canon, v-p of content at MightyWords, pointed out that while concise content is valuable, e-publishing is also well suited to in-depth material: "Technical readers like the search functions of e-books; they like to go right to what they're looking for." "Do we revere printed books too much, then?" Wolff wanted to know. "Are they like a fetish?" Here, Chip McGrath, editor of the New York Times Book Review, said while "e-books are trickling in, there aren't enough titles in any format to need special reviewing. Print books are just good at what they do."McGrath was a surprising champion of e-publishing, and suggested that kids are very likely to embrace e-books over print books because of their many advantages. Marketing and Distribution At sessions on both days, panelists acknowledged that authors can now go directly to the reader; much of the discussion focused on just how authors can make that direct connection. Denis Dutton, editor of the e-mail newsletter "Arts & Letters Daily," noted that rather than being restrained by the economics of print ("You couldn't publish too much because of the cost,"), e-publishing is governed by the reader's leisure time. "E-books eliminate the print cost. Now the great brake on publishing is people's time. How to find out what that market wants and how to get an e-book to it is the great issue. What channel you use is everything." David Granger, editor of Esquire, was disappointed with a recent electronic experiment: "This summer, we published a number of original fiction pieces, the most successful of which were in Peanut Reader format for the Palm. Then we did some nonfiction, and there were hardly any downloads at all." Granger said the test points up the need for more consumer research into what readers want in e-books. And if authors are to go directly to their readers, they had better be careful about their current publishing relationships. Oddly, Ralph Vicinanza, Stephen King's agent, told the audience that King's Riding the Bullet was posted on King's personal Web site because his print publisher, Simon & Schuster, wanted to avoid alienating big chain retailers. But he seemed to ignore the fact that King used Amazon.com to process his payments, which would seem to be just as alienating. Tablets and Music According to Microsoft's Dick Brass, an e-book device requires three things to enable the e-book market to grow quickly--low price, wide availability and great utility. And he noted that while the agreed-upon Open eBook Format standard allows publishers to easily deliver their content, it is not a display format--a single device cannot read every e-book format. "Now is the time to work on that end-user standard," said Brass. Brass pointed to Microsoft's work on a new computing device--an e-tablet, smaller than a laptop bigger and than a Pocket PC, that boasts the functionality of both--that will challenge the popularity of the Palm OS/PDA devices that now dominate the handheld market. Steve Riggio's game plan for B&N includes in-store print-on-demand technology for books and CDs: "You will see [digital laser] presses in our bookstores within three years, the same type that are working in our distribution centers," he said. "But more interesting, we'll do it with music sooner. We will be manufacturing CDs in our stores next year, with quality equal to that of the recording companies." Time-Warner Trade Books chief Larry Kirshbaum, discussing how TWTB will benefit from Time Warner's merger with America Online, cited digital cross-promotion and e-commerce. He said that there will probably be links between the giant corporation's TV and film properties and its book content sites. "You're watching Sex and the City, and in one corner, an AOL logo comes on: 'Buy the book, click here,'" suggested Kirshbaum. He foresees a time when customers might buy access to content, rather than individual texts. "E-books could go for mass-market paperback prices, or even for a subscription," Kirshbaum said. "You'll sign up, a certain number of dollars per month, and have continuing access to the publisher's list--a certain number of books during the month." New Formats Two new and proprietary display formats were introduced at the show, both aimed at presenting heavily graphical layouts. The first, FlipBrowser from E-Book Systems of Santa Clara, Calif., combines reader software and a Web browser. It automatically collects selected Web pages, or individual photos from Web pages, to produce a digital facsimile of a two-page book spread on the screen, complete with "pages" that the reader "turns" in 3D animation. This new e-book format d s away with forward and back arrows on the browser screen and attempts to re-create the print experience. TumbleBooks Inc., of Toronto, is aimed at children's publishers. The TumbleReader, also proprietary, basically keeps the animation, music and text in separate boxes on the screen, and collects titles in a child's personal library. Both companies are just beginning to make publishing contacts, and neither announced book-world partners yet. With e-Book World bringing the fall e-book conference season to a close, it was clear that the new technology has captured the attention of the book publishing community, but it was equally clear that no one has a good idea on how e-books will eventually be integrated in the the larger industry.
MediaDNA Protects, Distributes Content MediaDNA is a La Jolla, Calif.-based company that offers a secure digital rights management platform as well as a search engine promotion software service that permits publishers to circulate digital content while maintaining control over its use. As publishers push content into digital distribution channels, companies like MediaDNA (www.mediadna.com) are offering products that not only protect these works from indiscriminate copying, but encourage "superdistribution," or the ability of consumers to easily pass content along to other consumers, while keeping intact its rules for access and purchasing and consumer usage information. According to Bertha Edington, marketing communications manager at MDNA, the company has two products: eMediator, a flexible DRM application that offers "perpetual content control" by attaching a menu of access rules to the content; and eLuminator, an application that allows companies to circulate proprietary content through popular search engines while maintaining copyright and access protections Scott Williford, product manager at MDNA, told PW that the eMediator is "a flexible technology--the system plugs into the financial tracking system. It's agnostic. You can build a system and plug into it." EMediator allows a publisher to establish rules for usage (view only, view and print, time restrictions, etc.) and can be used for books, journals or magazine content, audio and video, as well as in-house to protect contracts, business plans and personnel records. EMediator also tracks the usage of content and provides the publisher with end-user information. MDNA charges a fixed annual price (using a formula based on number of transactions and the size of documents), rather than a percentage of sales. "Our pricing is unique and helps our customers budget," explained Williford. ELuminator is an automated service that can host and index proprietary content on the MDNA servers and, through agreements with popular search engines like Inktomi.com and HotBox.com, make that content accessible to general Web searching. "If you've got 10,000 reports in a company database, we can bring this content to the visible Web," with all access rules and protections intact, said Williford. EMediator and eLuminator can be used with browsers like Internet Explorer or Netscape by installing a small plug-in; the applications can be licensed together or purchased separately. "ELuminator is picking up customers faster," said Williford. "EMediator is more of a commitment." Edington told PW that the company has magazine and journal clients. McGraw-Hill is already a client, and MDNA is looking to get more book publishers interested. "Book publishers know they need a product like this, and we've been talking to them," said Edington. --Calvin Reid | ||||||
Looking at the E-Book Market
Nov 20, 2000
A version of this article appeared in the 11/20/2000 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline:
