Entries tagged with “ebook distribution” from Tools of Change for Publishing

O'Reilly iPhone App Tips and Tricks

Adam Witwer
September 4, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

As Andrew has discussed in some detail recently on this blog, O'Reilly has started publishing many books as iPhone/iPod Touch apps. Over the past couple of months, we've received a considerable amount of feedback from customers who have purchased the apps.

To address some of the most common questions we get, I recently added a page on oreilly.com. I cover three main topics:

• "Hidden" features -- handy things you can do that aren't always obvious in the UI
• Long code lines -- my attempt to help users deal with the question we get most often on the support queues
• Extracting the EPUB files -- yes, there is an EPUB file in that app, and you can get to it quite easily

I hope this page is useful to you. As we continue to receive feedback from our customers, I plan to add more tips and information.

ALA 2008: Librarians and Patrons Want More Openness

Liza Daly
July 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

At this year's American Library Association (ALA) conference in Anaheim, Calif., one theme emerged in talk after talk: librarians and the readers they serve demand more flexibility, transparency and openness in publishers' offerings. This affects not just digital-only reference works, but the book acquisition via library catalogs and standalone ebooks.

Reference publishing and resource discovery -- Reference publishers invest time and money in bespoke search interfaces for advanced users, but are users finding them? In the ALA panel "The Future of Electronic Reference Publishing," librarians repeatedly commented that multiple reference sources are confusing to users, and that resources must also be discoverable via Google and the library's own digital catalog.

If users do go directly to an individual resource or platform, the search interface should behave "like Google." Although the panel of major reference publishers did state that they are converging on Google's query language, many legacy systems remain that would be economically infeasible to re-tool.

Library catalogs and systems -- The need for more transparent, network-based services applies to the library catalog as well. In the marathon session, "The Ultimate Debate on the Future of the Library Catalog," speakers identified a critical need for geo-based services and APIs for finding what's in my local library -- now. Once a book is located I should be only a few clicks away from reserving it or even ordering it for delivery to my home.

That dream is still far off -- even with a service like WorldCat it's not currently possible for me to find and reserve a book at my local library. The closest offering presented on WorldCat is Harvard University's library, which is not about to lend to the likes of me. The problem is even worse for rural libraries. As for my local library -- I love books and this post is the first time it even occurred to me to visit their site. I'm not alone in that.

Ebooks -- This is a transitional time in publishing, and while many patrons still prefer print, an increasing number are asking for electronic books, especially in university libraries. Students and academics emphatically reject DRM and restrictions on usage, but many ebooks sold to libraries have technical barriers to printing, cut-and-paste and downloading.

Licensing and subscription costs are also a concern for libraries. Ebooks may be re-priced or re-bundled, challenging the basic assumption that once a library buys a title, it owns the book indefinitely. Librarians want assurances that the products they purchase are either available perpetually, or at least have clearly-stated licensing terms that do not change without notice.

The ability to safely and permanently archive electronic books has been a long-time concern of some librarians, but the floods in New Orleans and Iowa have changed some minds. Off-site electronic archiving would save at least some resources, especially for very small or rural libraries can't afford state-of-art preservation facilities.

Related Stories:

• What OpenID Can Do for Academic Publishers
• Aggregated Ebook Service Suits Research Publisher
• Survey Results: Students Rely on Digital Tools for Research
• Google Opens Book Search with API

Putting Ebook Piracy into Perspective

Mac Slocum
June 10, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Adam Engst from TidBits offers a comprehensive rebuttal to David Pogue's concerns about ebook piracy. Among the many notable points:

... the harder you make it for someone to buy an easily replicated digital commodity, the more likely they are to share that commodity as a way of making things easier for others. Look at the parallels in the music industry. Apple made legitimate purchases of music both easy and inexpensive via the iTunes Store, and anyone who was on the fence about whether it was acceptable to share music suddenly had a viable alternative. Providing a legitimate purchase path for electronic versions not only generates revenue, but also reduces illicit copying.

The teeth gnashing associated with publishing's transition to digital continues to obscure an important -- and simple -- point: publishing isn't the first industry to confront digital issues. Businesses in the music, film and media worlds have been tackling these concerns for years, and there are important lessons to be learned from their failures and successes.

Engst's argument about ease of use -- especially as it relates to iTunes -- deftly illustrates this. Regardless of your opinion of iTunes and Apple, it's hard to argue with the equation they've developed: make money by giving people easy access to quality digital material. This trail has already been blazed; publishers just need to pay attention.

On another topic ... Pogue's post cites two examples of scammers who, posing as blind readers, requested book PDFs and then copied them to piracy sites within 48 hours. Engst's experience with piracy is considerably different:

I have found our ebooks available for download on a handful of occasions; each time it was someone who had put the file on a server without realizing it was open to the public or who was transferring the book from work to home and had forgotten to take it down. I periodically search the file sharing services too, but it's exceedingly rare to find any of our ebooks there, and those I have seen were wildly out of date.

In short, far from the foregone conclusion that publishing an electronic book will result in rampant copying, our years of experience show just the opposite.

Engst notes that his company's subject matter (tech) and its size (small) likely minimize piracy, but there's an underlying point in this passage that's relevant on an industry-wide scale: blanket statements about the ills of piracy -- or the opportunities from piracy -- fail to recognize the nuances at play.

Whether we're discussing Pogue's run-in with "blind" con artists or Engst's limited issues with accidental piracy, it's important to remember that singular examples do not define trends (or unmask ebook cabals). Publishers need to look at ebook distribution, and the potential for piracy, on a case-by-case basis. To paraphrase Tim O'Reilly, certain titles from certain authors may benefit from increased exposure of any sort (that's the idea behind this experiment), but well-known authors with blockbuster titles might be undercut by widespread copying.

When it comes to piracy, free, and other unusual models, the only real mistake is embracing a closed-minded, all-or-nothing perspective. Doing so limits both the threats and the opportunities.

Engst's post touches on a variety of other piracy-related topics, all of which are worth considering.

Related Stories:

• Essential Points in the Free Debate
• Author Notes Risks and Opportunities in Free Ebooks
• Piracy is Progressive Taxation ...
• Responsibly Assuaging Author Concerns about File Sharing and "Piracy"
• How Do Publishers and Authors Get Paid in a "Free" World?

Aggregated Ebook Service Suits Research Publisher

Mac Slocum
June 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

An understanding of audience goals can prove fruitful in digital publishing, according to Cynthia Cleto, global manager for e-books and e-product management at research publisher Springer. From a Q&A at TechNewsWorld:

... our readers are working at a desk somewhere and they want specific information at their fingertips in a hurry because of whatever they are working on. Relaxation is not the driver in this market.

Cleto says audience needs led to Springer's "journalized" ebook collections:

They [academic readers/researchers] want highly specific information that may only be covered in a chapter or two. By "journalizing" each chapter, that is by making and presenting each chapter like a journal article, we make it easier and faster to search and download, and cheaper to buy since you can buy one or more chapters or the whole book. Either way, you get what you want, in a way you can best use it, faster and cheaper.

Based on Springer's ebook experience -- and O'Reilly's, via Safari -- the aggregated model is certainly worth exploring if a publisher's audience is focused on research, development and other action-oriented goals.

Related Stories:

• Science Publisher Offers Digital Subscription to Books
• The Importance of Viewing the World As Readers Do
• Bad Math Among eBook Enthusiasts
• Long Tail evidence from Safari and Google Book Search