What’s the state of digital publishing?

Elizabeth Weiss

I’m not too good at estimating numbers based on a raised-hand count, but MWF’s The State of Digital Publishing session attracted a predominantly publishing-industry crowd. Bob Stein, Victoria Nash and Elizabeth Weiss gathered to discuss the issues currently affecting publishers, booksellers and authors. For those interested in the incarnations that traditional books will take in future, all-day chair Kate Eltham announced the 2010 launch of The Institute of the Future of the Book.

Nash and Weiss bravely set out to summarise topics ranging from digital rights management, ebooks, self-publishing and piracy. Weiss suggested that we are at the tipping point for ebooks becoming an consumer-accepted format for reading material, with the US as the ebook hotbed. However, ebook reader technology is still expensive and not well developed enough for anyone other than early adopters to take them on. Australia in particular has little access to electronic readers, but Weiss predicted that when the Apple Tablet comes out, technology and price will have hit the consumer sweet spot.

Changes foreseen by Nash, who works in marketing at Macmillan, include publishers and authors dealing directly with consumers and subscription models being keen options, particularly for educational and reference publishers. The latter is a particularly exciting and radical concept, with Weiss chiming in that if a large facilitator of electronic reading material such as Google or Amazon were to offer a $20 ‘all-you-can-read’ crime subscription, for example, that it would be a tempting and exciting option for the reading public.

Bob Stein, who was impressed with the depth of inquiry and preparedness he saw regarding the future of the book at the Lonely Planet offices and Trinity College classrooms yesterday. He’s glad that he doesn’t work in a commercial publishing company, as he’s aware that the squeeze of commercial imperatives and the deep nature of the changes to reading and writing cultures must sit very awkwardly together. Weiss’ sentiment that ‘it will be a shock how quickly old forms will stop being as compelling as they have been’ was somewhat of a caution for the trade publishing sector, based on his perception that the reading public – those who purchase and read books – is probably shrinking.

There will be several more opportunities for those interested to learn about in the digital future of the book throughout today’s Digital Publishing Program, which ends with Stein’s Big Ideas: The Future of the Book session at RMIT Capitol Theatre.

Estelle Tang, 3000 BOOKS
Festival Blogger

Be brave in the new world…

As you may’ve learned from a previous post I’ve recently been deep in the digital world, trying to get my head around the future of the book. (I’m doing this as the festival is putting together a series of sessions on Digital Publishing, sponsored by our friends at the Australia Council.)

I’ve been in the publishing business (in some form or another) for over 10 years and I’ve always thought of myself as a fast-learner and a wannabe ‘early adopter’. (I fail as an early adopter since I think I’m wary of the object as consumerist fetish.) But surely, given my experience, it couldn’t be hard to put together an industry program on digital publishing? Surely the issues aren’t that hard to work out?

Well, it is and they are. To wrap your head around all the issues is to be able to consider and meld the interests of authors, readers, retailers, publishers and programmers; it’s being able to consider what’s going to possibly happen in e-tailing, digital rights, file formats and across the various hardware options (for e-readers) … Not only are you (as they say in the biz) ‘crystal balling’ (I have no idea which biz) … you need to do consider all this in a relative vacuum (well, without too much oxygen anyway).

[Actually here I’d like to thank those very generous publishing professionals that’ve helped me see the digital light, including Elizabeth Weiss, Kate Eltham, Victoria Nash and Brett Osmond, among others … I’m always pleasantly surprised by the generosity of those in the publishing trade.]

Although there are a few professionals leading the way in both larger and smaller publishing houses Australia has, mostly, been left in limbo when it comes to hailing the digital cab. All the action seems to be happening overseas. While a few e-readers are available thanks to Central Book Services Australians are mostly stuck in a holding pattern as we wait for the outcome of the format/device wars (kind of like the Clone Wars only far less Speilberg-tastic)… Actually many publishers will provide their books in a range of formats to suit a range of e-readers, so formats themselves aren’t holding us back. Is it rather the lack of great e-readers?

Having only seen a few, I’m yet to think the e-readers on offer are ready to meet the expectations of tech-savvy readers. (This is after being wowed by a fellow train-traveller and their Kindle, which looked ever so sexy.) The ones I’ve really played with (ever so briefly) aren’t intuitive to use, are slow to load and have interfaces worthy of the late 1980s. Funnily enough I was most disappointed by the fact that the screens only work in black/white or grayscale. (This seems a little silly given we all read off the page in b/w… And I fully understand why we need to use e-ink rather than having screens that are backlit [so we don’t hurt our eyes, etc.] … But this disappointment re. the screens was an honest, rapid reaction. I expected more.)

So is Australia going at a digital snails pace because we don’t have a trusted e-tailer on our home soil for e-books? (This was raised by more than a few people I’ve spoken with as the pre-eminent problem) Or is the fact that we don’t have enough Australian books available as e-books? I think, if anything, it’s possibly the fact that the debate over digital rights management (DRM) hasn’t settled itself. I.e. should publishers be enforcing such rights and how … can you loan your e-book or just your e-reader? can you save your e-book to your iPhone? can you … can you … Will all this DRM simply alienate customers as with music and MP3s?

As I understand it one of the biggest parts of the DRM problem is the idea of territories. Many publishers in Australia buy (or have) the rights to sell their book in Aus/NZ … how can they sell an e-book then in the US? Well they’ll need world rights won’t they? Or we’ll need websites/e-readers that can determine where you are from and where you’re buying your book… I wonder if the up-coming decision from the Productivity Commission will affect this too?

Is your head swimming yet? (If so — or even if not — if you’re interested you’ll need to get along to our Digital Publishing sessions … there’ll be more info on the e-bulletin on Monday.)

I will have to wrap up now, but I do want to clarify that I have no doubt that portable digital devices will capture much of the reading market in the not-so-distant future. I’m with those people who’ve suggested that mass market paperbacks, trade paperbacks, etc may go the way of the typewriter, but that we’ll then also support a market for beautiful hardbacks against that for our e-books.

But mostly I’m just unsure whether the devices that’ll become common will resemble the e-readers as we know them. I can’t imagine this; they don’t have the functionality that I expected these devices to require. For some reason I can rather see the dominance of devices like the iPhone that have a much greater functionality (across a diversity of media) … But (and there are a continual array of ‘buts’) the big question still remains, will they work for reading. Arrrggghhh. Take a deep breath.

And have a lovely weekend!

Regards,

Steve
Associate Director

E-what?

Hey there readers,

I’m going to be (refreshingly?) quick, as we are hard-up against some major deadlines for the festival program and there are 1001 things to do (and somehow, the list just keeps growing). Let it be said though, I’ve been loving my re-ascent into the current thinking around e-publishing, and would like to point you to just a few related items.

First off, I was pretty impressed (in my quick first glance) at Random House’s website. It provides a pretty good example of all the things that publishers (and perhaps all businesses) should be doing to engage with their readers/customers. E-bulletins, various types of content, news, events … it all seems pretty snappily done (which is to be expected I guess from a multinational).

Secondly, I’ve been having a quick read of Kate Eltham’s blog Electric Alphabet: Writing and publishing in the digital near-future. Kate is the Director of the Queensland Writers’ Centre and has been involving herself quite deeply in the concerns of digital publishing and online communities. I’m quite jealous that Kate’s been able to travel the world to extend her learning around all of this (especially to the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference); kudos to her.

Finally, if you’re interested in all this kind of digital ‘stuff’, the Australia Council has recently announced a paper on ‘Arts content for the digital era’.
This is “in response to the current and anticipated future impact of digital technologies on the arts sector, artists and arts audiences.”

Hope you’re all well.

Steve Grimwade
Associate Director