E-books – an overview Dr Bob Pymm School of Information Studies Charles Sturt University, Australia

Definitions E-book = the electronic counterpart of a printed book viewable via a PC or hand-held device. Note: NOT a CDRom May be an electronic version of an existing print title or only available electronically (eg. Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet first mainstream fiction e-book, March – 400,000 downloads in first 24 hours. Still available as a download to Amazon’s Kindle for $2).

Early e-book activities Project Gutenberg started 1971 – students keying in texts (still sometimes done, though usually scanned now). Uses straight text format – non-proprietary, long life. Focus on classics, copyright free Slow growth, by 1997 – 1,000 books online. By 2007, 25,000.

Growth in digitisation activity From the 1990s on libraries have been creating e-books through various digitisation activities (eg. Australian Cooperative Digitisation Project – periodicals and novels published between ) Academics creating on-line text books and digitising existing (eg. the Online Mathematics Textbooks collection – 67 titles by nebooks.html ) nebooks.html Access to all material mentioned so far is free – there is not a commercial imperative

Googling the universe Explosion of interest in e-books with coming of the Internet Then Google announced its Book Search Project – 2004 – deals with major libraries to digitise vast numbers (Harvard, Oxford, New York Public Library etc) Grogg_Ashmore.shtml

Google digitisation 10m titles in next few years – public domain for full text; in copyright – summaries or first few pages only. Google indemnifies Digitised version on own Library catalogue and held in own system but also held on Google books Note this is seen as a non-commercial activity by libraries – again, access is free; but Google is a business – are they as committed to long term preservation? What is in it for them?

Google and Univ of Michigan A six year, 400 tbyte project to digitise around 7 million volumes (everything out of copyright) Contract viewable online tiveagreement.html “In general, the Google Books Library project is designed to help people discover books, not read them from start to finish online.” Note size of outputs – necessary to have very sophisticated storage management systems to handle such vast amounts of data

The commercial world Following success of electronic journals, publishers looking to replicate with e-books Digitising out-of-copyright titles and making them available is no problem but … Why pay for them when Gutenberg or World Public Library may have them available for free? For new titles, the issue of piracy in one form or another concerns authors and publishers (attempts to restrict printing, copy and paste etc) How can a model be developed that actually makes money? (Stephen King ‘The Plant’ example)

The commercial world (cont.) “Book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales …. everybody agreed that the internet was a double-edged sword: good for growing an author’s audience but disastrous at turning that readership into revenue ” (March 2008, London Times) BUT Coelho [after a pirate edition of one of his books appeared on the Net and sales soared] explained why he thinks giving books away online leads to selling more copies in print: "It's very difficult to read a book on your computer. People start printing out their own copies. But if they like the book, after reading pages they just go out and buy it.“ (Feb 2008, Fortune Magazine)

The commercial world (cont.) Issue of ‘dip-in’ books, eg. cookbooks; falling sales Harry Potter example – JK refused an electronic edition but pirate copies up in 24 hours And e-publishing is cheap, but anyone can do it. So is the role of the traditional publisher in jeopardy? “Create your own ebook in a snap and sell it online.”

Universities Traditionally seen as for reference – thus University libraries the first to show interest and take up. Leads on from electronic serials – very successful Many universities creating own e-book collections and also studying use, eg. Different models – can purchase bulk collections of titles or load publisher’s catalogue and pay per loan

Example e-book collection

Universities (cont.) Swinburne experience – pay per loan then purchase after third loan – completely automated Over 5 months, 10,000 accesses – with 300 of the 40,000 titles accounting for 20% of use Concept of pure ‘user driven’ collection development

Commercial potential of E-books and recreational reading General book sales in US 2007, $25bn – growing 2.5% pa. since 2000 In 2000, it was predicted the US market for e-books would be $22 bn by Microsoft Reader have trumpeted such mind-boggling pronouncements as the estimate that e-books will outsell printed books by 2009 For 2007, was $67 million. BUT has grown 55% since 2002 Initial use in public libraries from mid 1990s with the launch of Rocket e-book readers – small scale, limited success Tendency to “put them out there and see what happens” rather than market research first

Read what you want, when you want 2008 – Amazon launch the Kindle - $399 Weighs less than a paperback (c300gms); long life battery High quality – print-like screen. E-book and e-audio Wireless connectivity to access database, download etc Over 80,000 book titles, including new releases Can program to download daily newspapers so there in the morning Mixed reception sales/

The Kindle and Sony Reader “Combined sales of the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader will be 1,000,000 units in 2008”

Recreational reading The World Public Library – virtually any classic freely available 500,000 titles Many public libraries offering e-book collections Few studies yet as to their impact but a lot of anecdotal evidence “Using the (Sony) TX reminded me how convenient the paperback size really is”.

Recreational reading (cont.) A study conducted with the ACT Public Library in 2007 drew similar comments (though e-audio more positive) A UK study found “emotional attachment to physical books” (Electronic Library v25 n5 2007) Importance of presentation – just reproducing print copy not so good – make use of benefits of e version Need for much more research on user response to ebooks

Finally…reading research Larger monitors better Reading long scripts reported as “tiring”. Preference to read long scripts in print (2005 study) Potential for speech synthesis – “read it aloud” Reading speed and comprehension similar between paper and screen but ‘skimming’ slower BUT Is the electronic book approaching the tipping point? That topic both energized and unnerved humans attending BookExpo America, the publishing and bookselling industry’s annual trade show (June 2008)