E-books
Device independence and mobility help e-book growth
Siân Harris asks some of the people involved in publishing, licensing and distributing electronic books about some of the latest trends in devices, formats and business models
Olaf Ernst, president, e-product management and innovation, Springer
Authors are very happy if we offer new
The biggest development in e-books that publishers are seeing is in mobile devices. E-book readers are
getting
more interest now in the academic market. When I travel, I see these devices in use for textbooks as well as for fiction, although the big fiction publishers are driving this. It is not just e-book readers though. We actually see much higher e-book downloads on iPhones than on Kindles. With these devices come developments
in formats. PDFs don’t look good on a small screen and not all devices support PDFs well. With ePub and full-text XML, publishers can also add much more value. These formats make the content more dynamic and help with things like integrating multimedia. The ePub format really covers a small screen properly with the content. We don’t have to change the content
to offer ePub. It is simply an additional rendition of the content, but with much more functionality and more value for end users and libraries. We are planning to offer ePub for our front list e-books soon. The important thing is to have content that is independent from the devices and their technology. E-books are becoming more interactive
with things like multimedia, although how much this is happening depends on the subject area. We are seeing a lot of multimedia in medicine and life sciences e-books.
18 Research Information April/May 2010
ways to present their work and find new ways to provide links, but I wouldn’t say that e-books have really changed the idea of books too dramatically so far. I believe that most authors still have print books in mind, although this might differ with the generation of the authors. Authors have to understand how e-books are used. This could impact how they describe their topic and pick keywords. Maybe we need abstracts for individual book chapters to help them be found through search engines. Shorter chapters might be better for reading on screen too. We work with the authors and it’s a process of mutual education.
‘I wouldn’t say that e-books have really
changed the idea of books too dramatically so far’
We had some problems with print book
sales last year, but this coincided with the financial and economic crisis – so it is very hard to conclude whether this was because of e-books. It is too early to draw conclusions. Some time, moving forward, we might see declining print sales while e-book sales continue to grow fast, but I’m not concerned about this trend. We have already developed a sustainable business model with electronic – and, as long as we manage the migration process right, we should be fine. But in contrast to journals, print books will never disappear. We have to manage it properly from the sales side. We have to get e-books into the
renewals model as with journals, and ensure it gets into libraries’ budgets. The music industry was completely overwhelmed when people stopped buying CDs, because they had no other business model. Electronic is the future for books and journals in our business, and we are well positioned and moving forward very strongly in our digital strategy. We have already overcome the biggest
hurdle – of coming up with a proper business model that is sustainable. There should be no confusion about what to do. Libraries don’t like the idea that they pay and then, at some point, it gets taken away from them. Libraries pay for our package and then it will stay on their digital shelf. Our model is very easy and straightforward. That helps get e-books out there and reduces confusion. Other publishers are also following the package ownership model. Most users are still accessing e-books from
the library’s OPAC. This is different from journals, where Google and A&I services drive much of the access. Like e-journals, though, users access e-books 24 hours a day. We don’t see much difference in the take-up of e-books in the different subject areas, but we could be driving this, because we are a very broad publisher. We have to get away from assuming
that people read e-books cover to cover. Big drivers with e-books are textbooks and professional books. We see a very high usage of our German-language programme. So far I haven’t heard any demand for
open access in books. E-book usage is very high, so librarians really believe that they are getting a good deal. Another big difference is that authors get royalties for books, but not for journal articles.
www.researchinformation.info
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36