Last week The Bookseller hosted a seminar entitled, ‘Reaching Readers Online’, at which Peter Collingridge of Apt Studio warned publishers of ignoring eBooks at their peril and pleaded with them to sort out their digitisation strategy, “…because they are coming whether you like it or not.” I agree with him wholeheartedly, which is why at Pan Macmillan we have, for almost two years already, been sorting out our digital rights, putting in place systems and processes to enable eBook delivery alongside print, having (sometimes) passionate discussions about eBook pricing policy and converting front and backlist titles ready for storage and delivery in digital form to the small but growing percentage of readers who will be ready to purchase eBooks as the first retail channels come online in the UK this year. But have we become over-obsessed with the eBook (a still discreet ‘unit’ of content which one has to download to a device in order to read)? The debate rages on endlessly about whether ‘consumers’ (otherwise known as ‘people’; us!) will ever want to read on a screen. But wait a minute, aren’t we all reading on screens quite a lot already? I don’t know about you, but I spend an unhealthy amount of my time reading on a screen. All day. Every day. It’s the one attached to my PC at work, my laptop at home and my Blackberry when I’m on the move. I read blogs. I read news feeds. I read web pages in many forms. Sure, I am still uncomfortable reading enormous amounts on screen (I get a crick in my neck and my eyes go fuzzy after a while), but I can certainly read the equivalent of a short chapter. (In fact, I read somewhere that people are comfortable reading an average of 14 screens at one sitting). As Adam Hodgkin points out on the Exact Editions blog, publishers may be ignoring the online streaming access model at the expense of the eBook dowbnload model. Maybe, with Google, Microsoft et al pushing book content into search results through their respective book search programmes, the way consumers will ulitmately reach book content is simply via web pages on a subscription or advertising-supported basis. It’s still spread-your-bets time in the world of digital publishing. That’s why we’re converting to SGML / XML at the same time as we convert to our various eBook download formats.
Are publishers over-obsessed with eBooks?
Posted by
7 Comments
Hi Sara. Nice post – and thanks for the link.. And I totally agree with you. I think that another presentation at the seminar made the most succinct point on this that I’ve heard for a while: that he believes in eBooks, but that the best format for them is web pages.
Whether it’s a model such as O’Reilly’s Safari, or something more like 37 Signals’ http://gettingreal.37signals.com (which we, ahem borrowed, for http://www.longtailbook.co.uk/The-Long-Tail) – web pages are brilliant for reading (or as good as a screen can be). But they are – as you say – great for doing other stuff with: adding in adverts (and fairly advanced, unobtrusive ones at that, given the maturity of the web page advertising market), tracking usage, or just plain old linking to. Commenting as well – rich media – the list goes on.
I made a quip at the seminar that PDF could become the MP3 format of the publishing industry – but the last thing we want is another format war. So props to you for doing the lot.
Nice to agree with you on this.
Peter
Hey Sara,
I agree with both you and Adam here. People are reading huge amounts online (and watching masses of TV online too but that’s another issue) we need to make sure we can take advantage of that!
Eoin
I agree absolutely on the point about whether consumers are reluctant to read off screen – Cory Doctorow wrote a piece on it at http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/03/cory-doctorow-you-do-like-reading-off.html. What I also find very interesting is the point that he touches on about the structure of the book changing – so that we’re not only dealing with spreading our bets on delivery platform, but possibly also in terms of form as well.
Thanks all. Crikey, I must stop being so non-controversial! Anyone want to *disagree*?
Hi Sara, I’ll disagree – sort of!
Having spent the entire week reading off my PC monitor, I agree that we all do it, and it’s great! Great, that is, for disaggregated bits of content like blogs or Safari Books. I still think that there will have to be a change in how people read on screens if publishers keep producing big bits of content that require readers to engross themselves – books. Or will a new, streaming access model be successful enough to drive publishers to produce content in a more disaggregated form?
Thanks buddy. Nice post.
Oh, go on then, I’ll disagree. If I could afford the paper and ink I’d print off most online things to read on the train or my balcony without a screen, in fact with Wikipedia I usually do
One Trackback
[...] Lloyd of Macmillan digital asks in their shared  team blog “Are publishers over-obsessed with eBooks?â€Â It’s a subject we’ve frequently covered on the LITOPIA AFTER DARK podcast, [...]