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Six months ago, Publishers
Row announced beta-testing of its new Internet book publishing
service. To date, more then 60 publishers have signed up to try out
this new way of selling books.
The interest in this new
service is not surprising, as it allows publishers to inexpensively
re-purpose the same files they use to print their books in order
to promote books online and off, as well as to sell online
access to them.
On the eve of BookExpo
America 2006, Alex Gendler addressed some questions about this new service
and explained his vision for the future of the book publishing industry.
A
few years ago investors and publishers lost millions betting on the
long-prophesized e-book revolution that has never occurred. Today 99 out of
100 books sold are still traditional books. What can you say about this?
Actually, the eBook
revolution already has taken place and is picking up steam by the
hour: today, all books begin their lives as digitals. Although the
number of digital book copies sold is still relatively small, they are
increasingly used not only as a stand alone product, but also to promote
and sell their paper counterparts.
Just look at their
use by Amazon in their "Search Inside the Book"
functionality or Google.Print. Also, see the extensive use by
publishers of sample PDF chapters: all of them recognize the value
of digital editions in promoting printed books.
So
any publisher can now participate?
Yes, it used to be
prohibitively expensive to create electronic titles, but now almost any book
today can be published online and it makes economic sense to do so. It
is thanks to Adobe PDF format that the revolution in publishing has taken
place. However, it is also this same format that brought digital book
publishing to a dead-end.
Now that Publishers Row has
developed an inexpensive way of converting PDF files to a new Internet-friendly,
secure format and placed it in service to book publishers, all technical
issues that were blocking the growth of digital book publishing have been
removed.
What
do you mean by Adobe PDF is a “dead-end’’?
The advantage of Adobe PDF is
that it can present the book the way the author and publisher have intended
it be seen by the reader. In addition, PDF files can be viewed on almost any
computing device. A great disadvantage of PDFs is that they must be viewed
through a proprietary viewer and contain within them all pages and
functionality of the e-book. Because of this, PDF files must be encrypted to
prevent unauthorized re-distribution.
This encryption drastically
reduces the usefulness of the PDF format without enabling publisher to
exercise sufficiently granular control over a book’s distribution and use.
Being client-based technology encrypted PDF files are also easily crackable.
In addition, books prepared
in PDF format can't effectively be used to promote other formats, since
regulating access to them online is a very cumbersome and user-unfriendly
affair.
Moreover, even if Adobe PDF
format didn't suffer these defects and encrypted files work every bit as
good as unencrypted, book publishers would still
have two major problems with it. One is a frequent
problem with the way Adobe Reader opens or better say doesn't open when
attempting to work with online PDF (one that does not save to a reader’s
hardrive).
And another is that when a
PDF file contains many non-web optimizable elements, it takes a very long
time for it to open and it is very difficult to work with. Publishing the
online edition of JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh-- a massive more then 2,000
page file with more then 150,000 bookmarks, links, and PDF markers—for
VardaBooks was one of the reasons we decided to develop our new technology.
Okay,
but why not then use standard HTML Web-publishing model?
All coded-text formats,
starting with SGML, are as a matter of principle incompatible
with what publishers need for presentation of books. They all
are based on the concept that content and its presentation are fully
separable, while any book publisher (unless he is a publisher of certain
type of documents and not really of books) knows well that content
and its presentation are inseparable.
Just take a look at
pagination. HTML pages are created to reflow. They don’t have fixed, easy to
indicate pages. To create paginated HTML large multi-page document is an
arduous task.
Nonetheless, for books pagination
is an absolute must. Not only for easy “navigation” and referencing, but also
not to loose all that important editorial work that went into creation of its
Subject Index.
From the point of view of a
book-publisher, the original concept behind encoded-text paradigm greatly
exaggerated the importance of a search-engine: books must be paginated even
in their electronic format. In a few years the codex will be gone, but
pagination will remain.
So
you’re not trying to overturn the history of books?
We are dedicated to books and
not to book-publishing technology. Take for example another facet of book
publishing. When a publisher attempts to produce “an important” edition of a
book, it will hire a good designer not only for the book’s cover, but also
for its inside.
The designer may use a great
number of techniques to give that book “a quality” look. One of these
techniques maybe the use of ligatures, i.e. combination of certain letters as
one character. There is absolutely no way to reproduce it neither in HTML,
XML nor any other MLs without installing special fonts on the reader’s
computer, something that may be unworkable.
In using Questia, for
example, you’ll notice that some documents contain notices that a certain
kind of content was published in a particular place and they suggest that you
reference printed book. That’s because, the original contained some special
fonts or certain elements that was too expensive or simply impossible to
reproduce in HTML format.
Another instance is spacing –
think poetry. To publish visually complex poetry in HTML requires a lot of
time - consuming programming.
Are
you saying that control over design is reason why most of the publishers have
chosen PDF format to publish their digital books in?
That’s right, with PDF, i.e.
presentation-centered format, the publisher retains control over what exactly
is seen by a reader. Both, the author and the editor spent a lot of time
looking at every little dot, ligature, word or line break and now along comes
a completely different production person [in a sense a new editor] for the
electronic edition who “rudely” inserts his understanding of what it should
look like and how it should approximate the printed edition. For most
documents, that is acceptable, but not for books.
About 5 years ago, there was
extensive discussion about a choice of formats for e-books. Many went in the
direction of encoded ASCII. Safari is one result of such approach – we
rejected this approach, without however rejecting the idea of text-encoding
per se.
Under the browser-friendly image
of our format there lies ragged, fully coded text framework which can be
further coded depending on publisher’s needs. As a result of these additional
“behind-the-image” changes a reader acquires a better usability of his
titles, but his perception not affected by these changes at all… they are
always authoritative facsimiles that were originally approved by the author.
How
is pricing affected by online publishing?
Here’s another advantage
of e-books. When you have an e-book, the publisher has to set the price
and the functionality ahead of time [copy, paste, print, etc.]Our own online
bookstore, eBookShuk.com, sells two versions of each title — a
ScholarPDF and ReaderPDF edition. Each comes with a different ISBN and has
certain characteristics. e-book technology allows publishers to use a single
ISBN and let the customer choose which functionality they want. The price is
changed with each modification of characteristic. For example, if someone does
not need to print pages, and only wants a book for six months, 40-50% of the
selling price can be removed. This is a much more customer-centric way of
publishing.
What
about bookstores--since that’s where most people buy their books—can they
benefit from your services?
Using our system to explore a book, is much more like the experience
you have at a real bookstore. You’d never buy a book from the store without
looking it over first. Now the publisher can offer this experience in any
locality.
My understanding is that today
only about 10% of all books are purchased online. It means that 90% are
purchased either through brick-n-mortar stores or catalogues. About 50%
of those sales are through traditional bookstores, and the others are made in
more general retail stores and catalogues. Sad to say, but somewhere I
came also across another figure: more than a third of Americans have never
been to a bookstore!
For a reseller to start selling
using our service, they just need to register with Publishers Row and choose
the books they wish to sell. Then, they add links, unique to their store,
onto their websites and we will handle the rest, paying them normally 35% of
the selling price.
Needless to say, we are also in
a position to create stores for them specializing in selling books carried by
us.
How
does your system work if I’m a user?
Normally, you’d come across a
book on a publisher’s Web site and there would be a “preview book”
button. Registration controls access, so after viewing of a few pages,
you will have to register to read further.
At
eBookShuk.com
you
can see all books without restrictions up to three times. Others publishers
allow only selected pages or chapters for preview – like a cookbook, or a
marketing tips kind of book. Those publishers don’t wish to “give away”
the book before selling it. Our experience over 5 years of letting people see
the entire book is that they still buy the printed edition or full access to
the electronic edition.
You exit a preview only to the
site that came from, or that the owner indicated. Unlike, for example
Google-powered previews which use books basically as advertising billboards,
our publishers have full control over all aspects through their control
panel.
Our previews don’t carry any
advertisements. It is difficult enough to convert a website visitor to a
buyer without having other distractions. Moreover, our system gives a
publisher an opportunity to enable any sized bookseller to use this powerful
bookselling tool as well. No reseller would place Google’s online preview on
his site. Why would he want to send his customers to Amazon?
Talking
about Amazon, last November, they announced that they will enable their
customers to purchase books by chapter and even pages. Can Publishers Row
enable your publishers to sell their books like that as well.
You can see the first implementation
of this new way of selling books here at
PublishersRow-powered
Hebrew
University Magnes Press Outlet.
As you see, with us a publisher
and his reselling partners can sell not only printed books, but also e- (for
offline use) and e-Books (for online use). Books in our digital formats can
be purchased either as a whole book with permissions to copy and print for
personal use or without such permissions.
The price will be adjusted
accordingly on a spot. One can purchase books either for permanent us or
let’s say for one or six months. If a publisher permits, a customer can
purchase only a particular chapter or set of pages.
By the way, Hebrew University
books are searchable not only in English but in Hebrew as well. Also, because
Magnes Press sells to Israel
market in shekels and elsewhere in dollars, the preview window takes language
into consideration and allows a publisher the flexibility to set his own
language and different set of prices.
It
seems that libraries too can benefit from the use of this new technology.
They have books, but they also have other resources.
I believe that book publishing
will be forever fragmented between big and small information producers, among
which libraries will continue to have a pride of place. I don’t believe in a
new Tower of Babel build around a concept of one
global-book powered by one all-devouring, omniscient super-search engine.
Our open-standards approach
allows libraries to quickly and inexpensively publish millions of pages they
have already have scanned — be it in TIFF or PDF formats.
Libraries, especially
specialized libraries, can also sell access to their information to give a further
boost to their mission.
What
does your new format do to the security of publisher’s files? Adobe
allows publishers to control a number of functions.
We were one of the first to test
Adobe Content Server, but we rejected its use because the encrypted book was
cumbersome to access. It required downloading the book to the computer before
reading and we wanted people to be able to see the book online before they
give us their money.
On top of it, Adobe’s encryption
was actually quite weak. A Russian guy demonstrated it was conceptually
flawed and even created freely available cracking software: instead of hiring
this guy, they attempted to put him in jail.
This
is one of the greatest fears of a publisher!
Our approach is completely
different. With us, the “brain” of a book, i.e. its search functions,
editable text, sophisticated navigation, useful bookmarks and links always
remain on our servers and pages are delivered one at a time. Publishers
can block printing and copying when making them available for online
previews. Any client-based system can be cracked. Our service is much
more secure.
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