Ebooks
content, commented: ‘As ebook sales and adoption in academia surge, we have seen a corresponding rise in the number of “e-titles” we are able to license. Last year alone, we added more than a half million new e-titles to the catalogue.’ This increase in availability of ebooks is reflected in what publishers notice about their customers. ‘The response has been very positive.
Ebook usage has grown significantly since we launched the programme in 2005; the usage continues to grow from 25.5 million annual downloads in 2007 to 56 million annual downloads in 2009,’ noted George Scotti, director of channel marketing at Springer. Publishing services company, Atypon,
which has developed ebook platforms for a range of publishers including Taylor & Francis and the American Chemical Society, echoes this experience: ‘We went from zero to 25,000 ebooks in three years, and 18 months from now we’ll be past 50,000,’ predicted Kevin Cohn, the company’s vice president of operations. And Toby Green, head of publishing at
OECD, said that the majority of OECD’s book business is electronic, rather than print now: ‘We started selling ebooks in 1998 and then launched a service for institutions in 2001. Usage and sales have grown steadily since. Today, income from selling books splits 70:30 in favour of ebooks:printed editions (but the ratio could be measured as 80:20 because many of our individual print sales deliver the ebook as part of the sale).’
Integrated platforms One of the big trends in scholarly publishing recently has been to integrate ebooks with other electronic products on one platform. ‘All content is available on a single platform and textually interlinked, with the ability to search large swathes of information, even from other disciplines,’ said George Scotti about Springer’s collections. ‘Because Springer content is accessible through a single, integrated platform, all ebooks are cross-searchable with e-journals and other Springer resources, expanding the patron’s reach and increasing the collection’s value.’
www.researchinformation.info
‘We went from zero to 25,000 ebooks in three years and 18 months from
now we’ll be past 50,000’ Kevin Cohn, Atypon
Elsevier has had a similar experience:
‘The availability of books and journals on one platform is highly appreciated by both librarians and end users, because it allows users to access the information they need in one single place and this helps increase the discoverability of the books purchased by the library,’ said a spokesperson for the company. ‘Our usage trends show strong usage per chapter for newer published books and steady usage of the books contents – even 10 to 15 years after publication.’ Technology company Publishing
Technology has observed a similar trend: ‘Business models are converging, with some distributors talking not just of print+electronic bundles but books+journals bundles,’ observed Mark Carden, executive vice president of global sales and marketing for the company. Despite this convergence, there is still
plenty of variety over the details of the business models for selling ebooks. ‘Librarians want a purchase model – but, for publishers, subscription models are very appealing. There are hybrids, of course – ways to keep the librarians paying while giving them perpetual access, including models like limiting the number of ebooks that can be “checked out” at any given time. Books that are checked out can remain perpetual access or they can be checked back in depending on the business model,’ summarised Kevin Cohn of Atypon. The ALPSP study revealed that outright purchase is by far the most common business model used, followed by annual subscription.
Annual subscription models become
more common for aggregated ebooks. ‘Open access also
features for conference and research reports,’ said Laura Cox, the author of the study.
The first colour e-readers have recently been released using E Ink’s technology
One of the things people like about reading books on e-readers is their displays. Around 90 per cent of e-readers today use display technology from USA-based E Ink. The company began in the mid 1990s to address a simple problem: books are very readable but their content is not changeable while the content on displays like LCDs is very changeable but they are uncomfortable on the eyes because they are backlit. The need for a light behind the screen also drains power, which is a problem for mobile devices. The solution that the company came up with
was to use particles of the same pigments that are used to make ink black and paper white. The displays are made of tiny microcapsules, each containing particles of the two pigments that have been given opposite electrical charges. Depending on the current applied to the microparticles either the black or white particles rise to the top and are seen by the reader. The display stays like this, without drawing any more power, until the reader ‘turns the page’. This is one of the reasons that e-readers have such long battery lives compared with other mobile devices such as smartphones.
Research Information December 2010/January 2011 23
According to the same study, sale through aggregators and vendors is the most popular route to market for scholarly ebooks, followed by the publishers’ own platform and then the hosting platform.
Formats and devices In addition to working out business models, standardisation of ebook formats is still a challenge for ebooks. At the time of the ALPSP survey in 2009, 57 per cent of the publishers who responded used flat PDF files
E-reader displays
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