As books go online, publishers run for cover

When file-sharing services like Napster hit the scene, the music and film industries found that their awakening to the digital world was a rude one. The publishing industry, it seems, has taken heed of this experience.

Unlike record companies, which faced the double whammy of the iPod and illegal file sharing, the online market has given book publishers some breathing room.

There is no hit device for reading books electronically, nor is there a place to go online to browse or download an unbeatable selection of books. There is, however, a keen awareness among publishing executives that this day will come and that they need to shape, rather than be shaped by, developments.

"We are facing all the same risks as the music industry," said Olaf Ernst, worldwide director of e-books for Springer, a German scientific publisher. "But if our reaction is like theirs was, we will have problems."

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, which ended Sunday, Springer introduced its pathbreaking system for managing digital rights for the scientific and professional literature that it puts out. Put simply, Springer's clients mostly university libraries will be able to access for a single fee more than 10,000 titles with minimal restrictions on sharing.

But the Springer model, as Ernst freely admitted, offers little guidance for how to manage the intellectual property issues surrounding best-selling novels and self-help books, which his company does not publish.

That sector of the publishing industry is caught in what Dan Penny, market analysis manager for Electronic Publishing Services, a London consultancy, calls "its own chicken-and-the-egg problem."

"We're going to see an iTunes of books at some point here, and that will drive the market forward," Penny said. "But we need to see an established reader device first."

A blockbuster device could conceivably bring major names like Google into the online sales picture, Penny said, as platforms for distributing e-books, which are electronic versions of books. Google is already encouraging publishers to participate in its Google Book Search service, arguing that its searches bring publishers new customers by including information on where to buy or borrow books. And Sony is offering a new solution. This month, it will begin selling the Sony Reader, an electronic device with a retail price of around $350, as well as a service for downloading books. The reader is larger than a typical hand-held device and uses so-called electronic ink technology to create a surface that is not backlit like a computer screen and hence easier on the eyes. A menu of books will be available through partnerships with HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and other major publishers.

But the notion of electronic copies of books whizzing around the Internet still gives pause to some publishers, especially smaller ones, who want to see how copyrights can be protected. "Once we can be assured that there will be security for our authors, then we can move forward," said Arnoud de Kemp, spokesman for the digital publishing working group of the German Association of Publishers and Booksellers.

De Kemp said that in time, new techniques for restricting access to copyrighted books like dicing a single work into many PDF files and using digital watermarks could solve this problem.

At the same time, some German publishers have formed an alliance to create an online service in German "Volltextsuche Online," or "full-text search online." Like Google Book Search, users can search keywords across a range of works that participating companies decide to make available.

Users may see a few pages or a few paragraphs of a book, or possibly just a citation that popped up after a keyword search. They would have to buy the paper book to read the whole work. But the service is, crucially, a new conduit through which publishers can begin to reach out to consumers directly, and build a brand devoted to bringing content online, said Theodor Bruggemann, director of the project. Eventually, that content could also be delivered in electronic form, he said.

The fact that major music companies did not initially offer attractive download services helped feed the black market of illegal copying, but by developing their system upfront, publishers are poised to make their case, if and when a popular reading device emerges.

"This platform allows us to make an argument," Bruggemann said.

(C) 2006 International Herald Tribune. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved