booklab

News come in regularly about just another project aiming at exploring possibilities and perspectives of books on digital platforms.

At the Paris Salon du Livre, the French Minister for Culture and Communication, Christine Albanel, said that “we must stop only endure the digital revolution”, but instead look out courageously for the potential. “The book”, she continued, “is one oft the very last domains where we still can anticipate (what is going to happen) and give it meaning and exact rules”.

Well, even if this reflects a genuinely French belief in rules and control, the statement points to one strong fact: The current wave of experiments and initiatives is probably driven by exactly the fact that many companies - and even public institutions - have grasped that closing the eyes with a strong belief that ever stricter policing of enhanced copyright legislation will not make those digital ghost disappear.

Anyhow, at the Paris Salon, amidst a huge controversy around an Arab call for boycot due to Israels presence as the guest of honour, digital readers and related stories were the “stars of the show“.

Right after the Salon, the “Gallica 2″ book digitisation project is supposed to go live, with 60.000 digitised works at the National Library, and 2.000 more new titles from some 50 French publishers - who received some subsidies for their move, according to The Bookseller. (Link - with subscription required)

Also, the French encyclopedia Larousse promised to have its largest edition put online soon (here is a demo), and a new epaper reader called Bookeen was unveiled.

At the Germany Leipziger Buchmesse, Ronald Schild, the head of the German digitization project Libreka, announced e-commerce tools for booksellers and publishers,  allowing them to integrate an eBook shop on their websites, granting readers for instance access to a book for a limited period of time.

 A forum debate with various members of the book and publishing community had it that  ”the book will remain, even without paper.”

But when Torsten Casimir, editor in chief of Boersenblatt, the German Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Association magazine, asked writer Michael Kumpfmueller about “user generated content”, the writer was sure that “writing fan fiction on things like Harry Potter will be over soon”. Well, well. A colleague of a nerdy Berlin group of online journalists and writers, Sascha Lobo of Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur, dryly replied: “This is what I call fatal arrogance.”

I admit I felt more enlightened by a piece in Shelf Awareness on “Digital Change: A College Survey Course“, with Mark Nelson explaining at CAMEX in San Antonio, Texas, that “digital change could come as quickly as the iPod became a staple of college students: in four years, iPod adoption by college freshman went from 0% to 85%.”

Nelson also reminded professional book people how readers, especially at learning institutions, “want lower prices. They don’t want to buy a whole book if the professor doesn’t want them to read it all. And they want shareable content that they can interact with.” He cautioned, “If we don’t find a solution to these questions, someone else will.” Nelson also pointed to several University projects that are worth exploring:

CourseSmart, an experiment launched by 6 major text publishers, Amazon is begining to sell textbooks over the Kindle and starts partnering with publishers, Ingram offers a growing inventory of content, CafeScribe is an affiliate program, and these are not the last examples of all that is going on out there - we will keep you posted.

The German book trade magazine buchreport published its yearly ranking of the top 50 German language book retailers (chain stores as well as local chains) emphasizing once again the dynamics of market consolidation.

The 2 leading chain stores, Thalia (a division of perfume retailer Douglas, with book revenues of 801 m Euros) and DBH (the combined Hugendubel and Weltbild groupformed only in 2006, with revenues of 711 m Euros) are way ahead of the rest of the pack. Their closest competitor Mayersche has only 145 m Eros in revenues.

 Well, this is not entirely true, as online retailer Amazon released its sales figures for Germany of 1,48 bn $ or roughly 1 bn Euros in revenues in 2007 (it was 1,1 bn in 2006 - or up 31 % with currency exchange effects taking into account). (Figures reported on 3 March 2008 by Franfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - available online on subscription only)

Acknowledging that Amazon sells a lot more than just books and other media, with estimates guessing that all media combined represent ca. 60 % of Amazon’s German sales, this puts Amazon at least at #3 in Germany, and probably as the retail book and media company with the most dynamic prospects of groth.

After the popular French encyclopedia “Quid” and the very prestigious German “Brockhaus” have decided to stop their paper editions in 2008, the same news was given by their Danish colleagues at Gyldendal.

“The Danish Encyclopaedia (Den Store Danske Encyklopædi), with 250,000 articles written by 4,000 Danish experts, sold 50,000 DVDs copies in the first four months after it launch priced at £70, which included online access for one year, compared with the £2,000 price of the print edition.
However one year on and Gyldendal has admitted that subscribers are failing to renew.” (The Bookseller)

When Harvard Librarian Robert Darnton announced in February 2008 that his prestigious institution is going ‘open access’ with most of its scolarly publications, this has caused echos and scepticism in Germany where science publishers still either tend to fight open access altogether or consider it ‘no threat anymore’ to their business interests.

In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he is also asked if he considered books (as printed on paper) an ‘endangered species’. He states that the book, as a variant of the ‘codex’ is “just too good to be easily bypassed by a computer”. So his next book will be published in the old traditional format - but with an added digital version “which will be much bigger and more complex”.

This has been said, almost a year ago, by my old friend Mike Shatzkin in a remarkable address at last year’s BookExpo America in New York, which include very practical suggestions as to what publishers and booksellers can do.

Here are 2 more quotes:

“It seems intuitively that the explosion of reading on screens — which has happened — will ultimately result in ebook reading on screens, but exactly how is not evident yet.”

“In fact, books will be among the last. That’s not something for us to be proud of as an industry.”

Publishers Weekly writes that the US children classic Dr. Seuss is going digital, thanks to a partnership between Dr. Seuss Enterprises and kidthing, a new content distribution platform. The website kidthing is to go online later this month.

Sometimes, too quick is too late. Publishers Lunch informed us only the day before expiration of the offer about a free download of Charles Bock’s debut novel Beautiful Children. The online site closed the freeby as of February 29 - but still adds to an emerging pattern: Putting up free stuff for only some limited period of time.

Also writers are getting interesting in the new digital movements - only to realize that publishers charge for downloadable books usually roughly as much as for printed books, yet don’t have to pay for all the storage, printing and delivery. This brings Kate Pullinger to write in the British Guardian which triggered some debate.

“Writers can learn a lot from the Hollywood strike. We deserve a better deal from digital publishing.”

This is how the piece opens:

“Writers of the world arise! It’s time to throw off the shackles of traditional publishing contracts and face a brand new digital future with a brand new set of priorities. Let’s copy or, should I say, learn from our brothers and sisters in Hollywood: don’t let the industry take our digital rights away! Give us our digital dues! In the shift from print to digital, writers are in danger of losing out big time.” It will be interesting to see if all those fast written thrillers will be put on hold - and both publishers and us readers shivering.

And at the Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig book fair) of next week, there will be an open forum about new digital book communities in germany, with among the speakers Miriam Hofheinz (www.perry-rhodan.net), Janet Sunjic vom Hörspiellabel Lausch-Hörspiele (www.merlausch.de) und Jennifer Nikodem (www.lovelybooks.de).

Co-Blogger Simon Owens told me more details about the Sci/fi publisher Tor Books and his new way of giving away fre eBooks. In his own blog “bloggasm“, he writes:

 ”Two sources who spoke to me on condition of anonymity said that it’s intended to be a “go-to site, a central community” for science fiction and fantasy fans. A few authors have already been approached to submit original short fiction to be published online. Tor is paying upwards of 25 cents per word for these stories and right now is only dealing with solicited authors.”

Thank you Simon.