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Will piracy rip the spine out of ebooks?

Ebooks will be big - but will pirates follow in their wake?

By Gary Marshall

January 19th | Tell us what you think [ 8 comments ]

Ebooks were everywhere at this year's CES. Digital books are clearly going to be big

For years, the publishing industry has been waiting for its iPod moment, the time when electronic books become mainstream.

It looks like that moment will happen in 2010: this year's CES had more electronic books than a library for Daleks, and some outfit called Apple is apparently getting ready to release a tablet computer-cum-ebook reader that'll sell a few units. That's the good news.

The bad news is that if ebooks take off, the pirates won't be far behind.

Piracy is inevitable, but that doesn't mean piracy needs to do to the book industry what it did to music. To an extent the music industry was the architect of its own misfortune, responding to the threat of piracy with excessive DRM, too-high prices and format wars that confused and alienated customers.

So has the publishing industry learnt from the music industry's mistakes? George Walkley is head of digital for Hachette UK, the publishing giant whose imprints produce everything from the Twilight novels to textbooks.

"I think the publishing industry is keenly aware of the experience of other content industries," he told us, pointing out that while legal ebooks do indeed use DRM, "there has been considerable development work by technology vendors and publishers to balance a desire for copy protection with offering the consumer greater interoperability and flexibility."

Format fights

One of the things that sent people to the pirates with music was the problem of file formats: your player wanted X format, the pirate sites had it in X format, but the only legal versions were in Y format.

Publishers are keen to avoid the same thing in books. As Walkley points out, Hachette's US parent company was the first big publisher to adopt the epub format, a kind of MP3 for books, and Hachette UK uses epub, too.

George walkley

BEATING THE PIRATES: Hachette UK's George Walkley says the publishing industry is keen to avoid the file format woes that plagued early digital music services

Where epub doesn't work, such as when it comes to publishing the complex illustrations you'll find in educational books, Hachette UK uses PDF. "These are the only download formats for ebooks which we create as a matter of course - although some retailers may convert those master files or apply proprietary DRM," Walkley says.

"Most of the other major publishers have adopted similar strategies… the effect of this is that device manufacturers are increasingly supporting epub natively. For example, Sony recently took the decision to deprecate its proprietary BBEB ebook format in favour of epub, and nearly all of the new ebook readers announced at CES support epub."

Money, money, money

Digital downloads weren't cheaper than CDs, and for now at least ebooks probably won't be cheaper than print. That's partly because most of the costs apply whether you publish a book on paper or on an iPhone, and it's partly because of tax: "printed matter" books are zero rated for VAT, whereas electronic ones have to charge the full 17.5%.

It's a weird anomaly, and if we were in the book business we'd be lobbying Alistair Darling like crazy to get electronic books treated the same as printed ones.

The challenge for publishing is to avoid being seen as greedy. In music, the debate quickly became characterised as The Man versus The Kids, where The Man was Bono, his celebrity mates and their filthy rich record companies.

In reality, most musicians are struggling to pay the rent, but that's not what the average file sharer thinks.

Maybe novelist David Hewson has the answer. Writing on his blog, he says that he would "happily stick a button up here that said, maybe, 'Please Don't Steal My Book'. That could link to a simple website run by a group of authors' organisations, perhaps with quotes from well-known writers, which sets out the facts about what writers really earn, how much we actually get from book sales, and why using ripped-off copies will, in the end, damage the interest of both writers and readers."

It's got to be better than Bono's approach in the New York Times recently: when he drew parallels between file sharing and illegal porn and accused ISPs of stealing all his money, the entire internet torrented U2 albums out of sheer spite. Probably.

Next Page: Should authors give their work away free?

Tags: ebooks, piracy

Your comments (8) Click to add a new comment

cheysuli

June 3rd

8. eBook readers are too expensive and eBooks are crippled by DRM and prohibatively priced.

When the eBook costs more than the hardback edition and isn't available in your reader's format or is not available at all, an eBook owner will be forced to piracy to be able to read any titles.

Price and availability need to change radically before eBooks take off.

And as for "ebooks probably won't be cheaper than print. That's partly because most of the costs apply whether you publish a book on paper or on an iPhone" hogwash! You cannot expect anybody to believe that the bandwidth to download a single 400KB file costs the same as the print, production & distribution costs of a paper book? Pull the other one.

I've bought a number of titles from Waterstones using Adobe's craptacular "random ebook eraser" software.

Things need to change and that means the publishing industry needs to wake up and skip over the music industry's disasterous approach and try something cheap, easy and DRM-free.

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chipher

January 20th

7. Send in the clowns!!

Once e-books offered PPV without copy protection, their business model was zero. Now with Amazon and Apple 'self' publishing, their business model *remains* at zero. Amazon and Apple will skim off any profits.

Unless you write a child fantasy blockbuster with a real publisher and real book contract, forged abahd et. Six months work for $1.35?

E-authors need a digital subscription pay wall for their (popular) Twitters and Mixx.

'Oh, what's A$hton tweeting now!!!!???'

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padstar

January 20th

6. Once ebook readers become more common place piracy will follow unless ,as suggested, the legal copy is so cheap and easy to find most users dont bother with an illegal version. As for Bono the man needs to be better informed. Look at the most pirated muscians. They are also the most successful(im not drawing a parralell, im just saying). Struggling muscians would still be struggling even if piracy didnt exist.

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tech89

January 20th

5. ebooks are no fun. Where's the fun of simply browsing a book shop. Plus your bookshelves would look pretty empty and pathetic if you only get ebooks. Piracy will happen regardless, life finds away.

A paper book you can take anywhere and everywhere like the beach, poolside, come rain or sunshine, paper is pretty tough against the elements and cheaply replaceable too.

An ebook is restrictive, needs power and therefore a source to recharge the battery if not disposable ones, cannot take on beach or poolside as will no doubt get ruined by the elements. And the books and reader cost a lot.

To me an ebook reader makes no sense and seems a solution to a problem that was never really there.

Do we really want to carry hundreds of books around on ourselves in a device when it takes some time to complete reading one book.

Reading is not music which takes minutes to complete playing and demands a larger selection for the listener on the go (as cds are bulky). A book takes time to read and your not in need to change it every couple of minutes and a device is not needed for reading on the go.

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duskrider

January 20th

4. "For years, the publishing industry has been waiting for its iPod moment, the time when electronic books become mainstream."

I think this sentence needs to be re-thought. More like "for years the publishing industry has been fighting technology advances tooth-and-nail trying to avoid ebooks but are now forced to face reality and come into the modern world."

Education of us mere mortals really does help. I feel ripped off paying the same for an ebook as a paper copy, but knowing things like the tax issue helps. If we don't feel ripped off, we won't find it as easy to justify ripping them off in return.

I think books don't have as bad a rap as music does, mostly because for so many years the music industry forced you to buy a whole CD of 95% **** to get the 5% good stuff you wanted, whereas books are individual things and not given to this impression. Books aren't so cheap, but given the hours of entertainment per book they aren't so bad either. Plus, they have always had a tangible value as compared to music.

I think book prices around $4.99US would actually net the publishers more of my dollars as I'd be more willing to try unknown authors if my risk was lowered.

Easy access to new books is the best selling feature of ebooks and I think publishers that capitilize on that will succeed. Sony's ebook store works great with my Sony ereader so I buy more books there because of it. Amazon and Kindle are also joined at the hip and work great together so it sells well. A lesson well learned from the iPod+iTunes ecosystem.

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