With the avenues for obtaining eBooks expanding we take a look at the ethical considerations behind your latest literary fix.
More and more, readers are either trading paperbacks for eBooks or using digital downloads to complement their physical libraries. Peak hour train carriages are increasingly full of faces lit by the glow of an e-reader, while those thumbing dog-eared volumes seem in decline.
Global figures appear to support this notion. In the US, eBooks made up 20% of the consumer book industry last year, up from 15% in 2011. In terms of revenue, the percentages are even greater. Consumer eBooks netted publishers $3.042 billion in revenue, up 44% on 2011.
This seems to back-up figures published in Cover to cover: A market analysis of the Australian book industry by PwC and currently the only investigation into Australia’s ebook market. The study found that the value of eBook sales in Australia grew at an annual average of 72% from 2005-2010. The report also predicted print book sales would grow 5% from 2010-2011, while eBook sales volumes would explode 230.8% in the same period.
This seems to be the case. Yet, while eBooks become increasingly accepted and commonplace, their growth is bellied by a growth in the way that readers engage with eBooks and the ways in which consumers are accessing them.
Like other forms of digital content, people are buying, borrowing and stealing eBooks, but the traditional nature of books presents a number of problems that publishers, booksellers and authors must consider that set eBooks apart.
Buying
Buying eBooks is pretty straight forward (unless you’re a bookseller). For consumers all you need to do is log on to a site that sells eBooks. These may be e-tailer behemoths like Amazon, Kobo and Apple, online platforms Bookworld and Booktopia or booksellers like Dymocks, Angus & Robertson or Pages & Pages Booksellers.
Australian consumers can expect to pay roughly the same amount for an eBook across local booksellers because of an agency agreement with Australian publishers. Of course, like going into a bookstore, prices do vary on eBooks depending on promotions, loss-leading and discounting strategies.
‘Under the agency agreements no [below cost] discounting can go on, so that levels the playing field for us but there’s still competitive prices,’ Jon Page of Pages&Pages told us. ‘EBooks are still half the price of a print book so you are getting a good price on the eBook but a lot of small publishers aren’t on this agency and Amazon does what I call predatory pricing, where they sell eBooks well below cost price so its impossible to compete on those, but thanks to the agency model we’re able to compete on a more level footing.’
While consumers might be tempted to avoid Australian booksellers by buying eBooks on international sites like Amazon that can undercut prices via heavy discounting, doing so threatens the existence of bricks and mortar stores.
It’s also worth noting that booksellers are putting up as much fight as they can muster. Pages&Pages sell the eBook format of Michelle de Kretser’s Miles Franklin winning novel Questions of Travel at $16.99, Angus & Robertson (bigger and with more buying power) sell it for $11.99, Dymocks $17 and Amazon offers it for $9.99 in a format only readable on their Kindle device. Interesting to note that many independent bookstores sell Questions of Travel for $22.99 in paperback, though that’s likely a promotional price since the award was very recently bestowed.
While most booksellers use the ePub format for their ebooks, which can be read on Apple devices, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader and Kobo eReader models, Amazon, who controls 60% of the eBook market share, uses its own AZW format, meaning that people who don’t want to buy from Amazon that have a Kindle are forced to. While it’s apparent that Amazon offers the cheapest eBook price for Questions of Travel, it’s not that much below a traditional bookseller and is locked to a Kindle.
During certain promotions consumers can snap up cheap eBooks from major writers at unbelievable prices. In the Northern Hemisphere summer last year, Sony sold eBooks for UK 20p, including works by Jeffrey Archer, Kate Grenville and Peter James. This of course lead to Amazon lowering the price of their eBooks, at great cost to them since they sell far more eBooks than Sony, and thus lost potential profits during the exercise.
Like consumers, for authors this was significantly advantageous. While Sony and Amazon sold their titles for less than a dollar, authors still got the same royalties they usually would.
Peter James’ Dead Man’s Grip was involved in the promotion. The author told The Guardian that while happy with the royalties, there was a danger. ‘The public starts getting used to paying even less,’ he said, noting that independent bookshops already facing stiff online competition will ‘lose out in the long term’.
Reselling
Of course, in the past if you wanted a cheap book, you went to a second-hand bookstore. This raises one of the fundamental digital questions – how does something digital ever lose value? It’s not like the cover tears or the pages stain.
While Apple has applied for a patent to resell purchased eBooks, music, movies and software, Amazon has already won one for the same purpose, but despite the arrival of these giants on the scene, there’s a much simpler problem – digital works are licensed – you never actually own them. Coupled with the restrictions of DRM, this is why you can’t lend an eBook to your friend. It’s technically not yours.
As the Amazon and Apple patents demonstrate, there are those thinking of selling on their old digital wares. In the music industry, ReDigi started doing this by allowing users to upload old iTunes tracks to their servers, removing them from the seller’s computer and transferring those songs to the buyer’s computer. An eBook system would presumably work in the same way.
Capitol Records has taken ReDigi to court over the matter, arguing that ReDigi is infringing the record company’s copyright by reselling tracks, which in essence is making an ‘unlawful reproduction’. It’s an important case that raises the debate about digital downloads being licenses or purchases, and in a blow to the used e-book market, federal judge Richard Sullivan has just ruled in favour of Capitol Records, though ReDigi can still appeal.
While the possibility of a used e-book market would be good for consumers, it wouldn’t necessarily benefit creators.
‘The resale of eBooks would send the price of new books crashing,’ the best-selling novelist and president of the Authors Guild Scott Turow told the New York Times. ‘Who would want to be the sucker who buys the book at full price when a week later everyone else can buy it for a penny?’
Borrowing
Because of the above stipulations on digital works, borrowing eBooks from a friend is restricted; unlike traditional books that you can lend to anyone you please.
Most libraries today offer digital titles for download, including current bestsellers and new releases. The State Library of Victoria offers eBooks from over 87 publishers, including Text Publishing, Penguin, Allen & Unwin and Random House.
These borrowed books last for a lending period of seven, 14 or 21 days and don’t need to be returned, they simply disappear from your compatible device once the lending period expires.
Many libraries in Australia use OverDrive to lend eBooks, which is based on browser-based technology acquired from Australian company Booki.sh, making them available on most devices and liberated from restrictive DRM.
Unfortunately at the moment, eBooks aren’t included in Public Lending Rights schemes, meaning that authors aren’t getting paid for eBook borrowing as they would with a traditional book.
While it would be incredibly nice of you to look for a well-priced eBook title online instead of borrowing for free, the author does benefit in finding themselves another fan (if you like it). This idea works in much the same way as publishers discounting book to generate interest in an author and lead to potential future sales.
Pirating
Another area where authors aren’t benefitting in the eBook arena is pirating. While DRM is meant to protect authors and publishers against piracy it’s relatively easy for wilful hackers to crack.
Much like music piracy, eBooks can be readily downloaded via Torret sites in the same way that movies, TV shows and songs can. Like record companies, publishers are finding out and targeting individual pirates who are sharing eBooks online.
At the moment German researches are working on a new form of DRM, called SiDiM that’s hoping to change individual words in an eBook to track pirated books back to their original owner.
Even before that technology is implemented, publishers Cengage Learning, John Wiley and Sons, Elsevier and McGraw-Hill are trying to unmask prolific eBook buccaneers, obtaining subpoenas to force Usernet providers to reveal the identities of uploaders ‘Hockwards’ and ‘Rockhound’.
Given the measly price that e-tailers and booksellers are asking for eBooks, pirating the works of authors who potentially spend years writing a book shows a complete disregard for an artform these people apparently enjoy.
If DRM was removed and people could share their books in the first place, then piracy wouldn’t be an issue. As the Tor experiment proved, removing DRM doesn’t necessarily lead to increased piracy. In fact, it may actually benefit authors by introducing their works to new readers and help publishers engage with the reading community.
Need more help? You can download Aristotle’s Ethics as an eBook completely guilt-free right here.
