Digitalwall: Internet and Books (1) Dilemma of Online Publishing

Be it physical or virtual, well-known writers lukewarm to online publishing.

[+] A controversial digital library project

At the end of 2004, emerging online company Google planned to scan book collections in New York public library as well as libraries at four universities - Harvard, Stanford, Michigan in the U.S. and Oxford in England - and indexed the material for online search. The Google Print project immediately caused a stir.

By stir it means that competitors (e.g. Microsoft) followed suit at once, and copyrighters rallied against what they thought massive copyright infringement with the Authors Guild and the Association of Authors Representatives in the U.S. raising an action respectively against Google.

Amid waves of criticism, Google announced that it would suspend the digitization of copyrighted books and would like to hear publishers' opinions and find out which books to be excluded from the digitization project. On the other hand, Microsoft sought to pace up and overtake Google in similar plans.

Libraries are the hubs of human knowledge and wisdom. Domestic or abroad, we have been seen destructive attempts in wars to burn book collections, which distressfully cause cultural faults. The digitization of libraries not only makes preservation easier, but facilitates the distribution of ideas.

If it is a right thing to do, it is to our common interest, and the competitors exclaimed, "Why we never thought of this before? Now let's follow suit," it is strange that the project did not get on well. Behind the scene it's actually a struggle of an industry.

[+] Selling books as a stepping stone to e-commerce

The development of the Internet has been tangled with words like "books" and "publication". First it was Amazon which initiated the fashion of online bookstores, and no sooner we'd seen successful eCommerce, starting as e-bookstores, emerge from the world over. (And those successful ones began to expand their selling lists with no surprise.)

Why can selling book be a stepping stone to eCommerce? Firstly, there is the demand from consumers. Secondly, the low unit price of books helps to lower the entry barrier to online shopping for consumers. In addition, there is little risk of damage caused by crashing during the shipping of books, and loose requirement for timeliness. All these conditions make it an ideal product for online shopping in its early stage.

For hardcopy books sold online, there is always an issue of delivery of physical goods, which is contradictory to the virtuality of the Internet. The margins for books are already thin, and profits are further eaten away by logistics cost. This is causing headaches for these online businesses. That's why we saw an upsurge for eBooks in around 2000.

In March 2000, the famous US horror writer Stephen King released his new novel on major online bookstores. This 66 paged short novel was priced as low as USD 2.5 and available in electronic version only. No paper books. This new release by the horror master had triggered a rush among fans.

For the sake of copyright protection, this book can only be read via specific software GlassBook. Even with the restriction, still there were a total of 400 thousand books sold on Amazon within 24 hours after its release. Afterwards, however, Stephen King publicly expressed his disappointment over the development of eBooks and declared that he would never publish any book in electronic version.

[+] The dilemma between virtual and physical publication

We may not be able to perceive the discontent of the horror master, but we can surely imagine what it means for a ordinary person like you and me to sell a volume of 400 thousand books online - this would very much equal to a reputation as a "popular online writer" and a royalty of USD100 thousand (estimated as 10% of the sales).

Yet this is exactly where the problem lies. Had Stephen King not been famous in the physical publishing world, there wouldn't be any interest in his eBooks. EBooks have long been a must on the sales list of online bookstores, yet you can hardly find a book by well-known writers on the list.

For if it is a book by a renowned author, you would rather pay for a hardcopy for its better reading experience. (It goes without saying that a computer monitor is not an ideal reading interface, which proves to be the hardest obstacle to the expansion of eBooks.)

And there is another trend that goes the other way around. In 1999, "Slicker Tsai", a writer, vaulted into prominence across the Taiwan Strait for his online novel "The First Intimate Touch," which had stimulated the birth of a new breed of online writers. So it seems likely to first grow publicity by writing free novels online and then to reap profits through selling paper books.

Across the Strait, we've also seen many websites for literary online communities, such as Yoshow.com in Taiwan and rongshuxia.com in China. But you can't trade articles for money in the virtual world. At the end of the day, you can only make money through the business of traditional publishing. All this must have made many business owners very exhausted.

[+] The old system encroached, the new one yet to be seen

It is no easy task to nurture a well-known online writer to the extent that her/his fame can be transformed into profits in the physical publishing world. For an article that has been posted all over the Net, it is questionable how much one would be willing to pay for it. And for writers that make a name for them on the Net, most of them will choose to turn to the physical publishing business for good.

From Google's digital library project to online publishing, my purpose is trying to point out that, while it is inevitable to go digital in terms of the distribution of books, there is a growing concern of publishers and authors that their rights will be sacrificed because they haven't seen any sustainable new business model.

Actually it is a common plague for all forms of digital content: Old rights are being encroached, while new income is far from a sure thing; only it's more so for music and movies and less for literary works. Yet, such phenomenon is expected to become more common with digitalization tools getting more popular.

Google's digital library project attempts to generate revenues by selling keyword advertisements. It seems to suggest that, to some extent, rights are always associated with money. If authors can be benefited from Googles' advertisement sales, will they become less resistant? (
2005/12/04 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to
China Internet/Telecom )