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http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/trends/article.php/755491
By Alexis Gutzman April 30, 2001 Do you know who your competition is? Do you have a plan of action of how you're going to compete with them? The near-failure of e-books and of the ePublishing industry to recognize their competition (and the niche e-books can fill) can be a valuable lesson for other industries, as well. Initially, the thinking was that books could be moved over (actually moved back, since most books are digital before they are published on paper) to digital format, then they could be delivered in real-time - none of that inconvenient waiting for delivery - to hungry readers. One problem with this thinking was that it assigned no value to the physical nature of a book. Proponents of this new industry failed to note that books are already the ultimate in portable entertainment, and few potential customers were clamoring for an improved product. It was assumed that digital was inherently preferable to analog (typical technophile's logic), and didn't factor in that the digital material would ultimately be rendered either on the screen of a computer, the screen of an e-book reader or PDA, or printed on paper. However, e-books aren't as irrelevant as you probably have been led to believe. As evidence that e-books are already dead, we read that Stephen King abandoned (temporarily) his The Plant e-book project. But should a mystery have been an e-book in the first place? E-books solve the searchability, immediate distribution, and length problems of paper books. As good as paper books are for storing and delivering information, there are some features that can be improved. First of all, there's the absence of a search function. While reading material in a linear manner has it's appeal, it can be difficult to find what you've read when you want to refer to it later. Also, even though the content is not inherently physical, the delivery vehicle is, which means that unless you're in the store that has the book you want, you can't get at the content immediately. There's also the issue of book length. Three hundred pages is not a bad length for a book, but in this (to borrow a cynical friend's expression) post-literate society, a lot of people are going to be put off by that length. The Internet has accustomed us to the idea that we can find (for free) all the information we need in short, readable column-length snippets. Yet, for some reason, the e-books that have gotten all the press have been books for which two of the three improvements don't even apply. Fiction books rarely need to be searched, and fiction readers frequently want their books longer, not shorter. Certainly, there's no demand for only a chapter of a fiction book, the way there might be for a portion of a technology book, a business book, or a home-improvement book. One of the reasons why the ePublishing industry has failed to take off must be attributed to the fact that the wrong content has been offered for e-book delivery. Today, most authors have to choose, when they conceive of a book, whether to go with a traditional publisher or an ePublisher. Why the choice? Because traditional publishers have been hostile to ePublishing, fearing it would cut into their market for books. One publisher, AMACOM (the publishing arm of the American Management Association), has realized that ePublishing isn't a threat, but a complement to traditional publishing. They also have the ideal content for delivering in pieces: business books. They've selected DigitalOwl to distribute their content in e-book format. I was intrigued by this deal because my most recent book, The E-commerce Arsenal: 12 Technologies You Need to Prevail in the Digital Arena, was published by AMACOM. Realistically, how many readers, who were looking for information on getting started in e-commerce, were thinking of implementing all 12 technologies? Chances are, most readers will buy it for one or two technologies, perhaps reading about the rest just to see what they might want to do down the road. DigitalOwl delivers e-books in two formats: pdf and HTML. DigitalOwl delivers its own digital rights manager, called the Personal Content Manager, with the e-books. E-books, or portions of e-books can be forwarded, but the recipient will see only a preview of the forwarded content until he purchases his own copy or subscribes (as specified by the publisher). When you order the book, you indicate the format. Wireless devices need TealPoint's TealDoc or Aportis' AportisDoc readers. You can synchronize e-books between your wireless devices and laptop or desktop. The first book that will be delivered for AMACOM via DigitalOwl will be a business correspondence handbook, which typically sells for $69.95. Since this book includes a large diversity of sample sales letters and customer service letters, with multiple examples of each, readers will be able to purchase only the category of letters in which they are interested for $20-$25. In this case, the search feature will be a big plus over a paper book. As long as the e-books industry focuses on repurposing content that would most appropriately be delivered digitally, in real time with search capability to those who want article-length content (15 to 40 pages), the death of e-books has been greatly exaggerated. Alexis D. Gutzman is an E-commerce Technology Author and Consultant and author of The HTML 4 Bible, FrontPage 2000 Answers!, and ColdFusion 4 for Dummies. Her newest book, The E-commerce Arsenal: 12 Technologies You Need to Prevail in the Digital Arena is now available. She can be reached at agutzman@internet.com |
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