The Future of Electronic Publishing
By Sam VakninUNESCO's somewhat arbitrary definition of "book" is:
""Non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages excluding
covers".
The emergence of electronic publishing was supposed to change all that.
Yet a bloodbath of unusual proportions has taken place in the last few
months. Time Warner's iPublish and MightyWords (partly owned by Barnes
and Noble) were the last in a string of resounding failures which cast
in doubt the business model underlying digital content. Everything
seemed to have gone wrong: the dot.coms dot bombed, venture capital
dried up, competing standards fractured an already fragile marketplace,
the hardware (e-book readers) was clunky and awkward, the software
unwieldy, the e-books badly written or already in the public domain.
Terrified by the inexorable process of disintermediation (the
establishment of direct contact between author and readers, excluding
publishers and bookstores) and by the ease with which digital content
can be replicated - publishers resorted to draconian copyright
protection measures (euphemistically known as "digital rights
management"). This further alienated the few potential readers left. The
opposite model of "viral" or "buzz" marketing (by encouraging the
dissemination of free copies of the promoted book) was only marginally
more successful.
Moreover, e-publishing's delivery platform, the Internet, has been
transformed beyond recognition since March 2000.
>From an open, somewhat anarchic, web of networked computers - it has
evolved into a territorial, commercial, corporate extension of "brick
and mortar" giants, subject to government regulation. It is less
friendly towards independent (small) publishers, the backbone of
e-publishing. Increasingly, it is expropriated by publishing and media
behemoths. It is treated as a medium for cross promotion, supply chain
management, and customer relations management. It offers only some minor
synergies with non-cyberspace, real world, franchises and media
properties. The likes of Disney and Bertelsmann have swung a full circle
from considering the Internet to be the next big thing in New Media
delivery - to frantic efforts to contain the red ink it oozed all over
their otherwise impeccable balance sheets.
But were the now silent pundits right all the same? Is the future of
publishing (and other media industries) inextricably intertwined with
the Internet?
The answer depends on whether an old habit dies hard. Internet surfers
are used to free content. They are very reluctant to pay for information
(with precious few exceptions, like the "Wall Street Journal"'s
electronic edition). Moreover, the Internet, with 3 billion pages listed
in the Google search engine (and another 15 billion in "invisible"
databases), provides many free substitutes to every information product,
no matter how superior. Web based media companies (such as Salon and
Britannica.com) have been experimenting with payment and pricing models.
But this is besides the point. Whether in the form of subscription
(Britannica), pay per view (Questia), pay to print (Fathom), sample and
pay to buy the physical product (RealRead), or micropayments (Amazon) -
the public refuses to cough up.
Moreover, the advertising-subsidized free content Web site has died
together with Web advertising. Geocities - a community of free hosted,
ad-supported, Web sites purchased by Yahoo! - is now selectively
shutting down Web sites (when they exceed a certain level of traffic) to
convince their owners to revert to a monthly hosting fee model. With
Lycos in trouble in Europe, Tripod may well follow suit shortly. Earlier
this year, Microsoft has shut down ListBot (a host of discussion lists).
Suite101 has stopped paying its editors (content authors) effective
January 15th. About.com fired hundreds of category editors. With the
ugly demise of Themestream, WebSeed is the only content aggregator which
tries to buck the trend by relying (partly) on advertising revenue.
Paradoxically, e-publishing's main hope may lie with its ostensible
adversary: the library. Unbelievably, e-publishers actually tried to
limit the access of library patrons to e-books (i.e., the lending of
e-books to multiple patrons). But, libraries are not only repositories
of knowledge and community centres. They are also dominant promoters of
new knowledge technologies. They are already the largest buyers of
e-books. Together with schools and other educational institutions,
libraries can serve as decisive socialization agents and introduce
generations of pupils, students, and readers to the possibilities and
riches of e-publishing. Government use of e-books (e.g., by the
military) may have the same beneficial effect.
As standards converge (Adobe's Portable Document Format and Microsoft's
MS Reader LIT format are likely to be the winners), as hardware improves
and becomes ubiquitous (within multi-purpose devices or as standalone
higher quality units), as content becomes more attractive (already many
new titles are published in both print and electronic formats), as more
versatile information taxonomies (like the Digital Object Identifier)
are introduced, as the Internet becomes more gender-neutral, polyglot,
and cosmopolitan - e-publishing is likely to recover and flourish.
This renaissance will probably be aided by the gradual decline of print
magazines and by a strengthening movement for free open source scholarly
publishing. The publishing of periodical content and academic research
(including, gradually, peer reviewed research) may be already shifting
to the Web. Non-fiction and textbooks will follow. Alternative models of
pricing are already in evidence (author pays to publish, author pays to
obtain peer review, publisher pays to publish, buy a physical product
and gain access to enhanced online content, and so on). Web site rating
agencies will help to discriminate between the credible and the
in-credible. Publishing is moving - albeit kicking and screaming -
online.
About the Author
Sam Vaknin's eBookWeb.org articles:
http://ebookweb.org.master.com/texis/master/search/?q=Vaknin
Sam Vaknin's "InternetContent" Author Archive:
http://www.internetcontent.net/AuthorProfile.asp?AuthorID=14
Other Articles:
The Future of the Book
How To Unleash Your Own Viral Marketing Campaign
So you Wrote an E book Now What
The Top Ten Steps to Springboarding Your eBusiness Part 1
10 Quick Tips on How to Create Distribute and Profit
Using New Content to Build Links
How to Promote your Web Site by Writing Articles
10 Strategies For Multiplying Your Orders
How To Pick A Business Opportunity
Submitting Your Website Is A Must
http://www.viral-ebook.com
