New York Times는 소비자의 반응이 불확실함에도 불구하고 전자서적을 둘러싼 주도권 경쟁이 치열해지고 있다고 보도했다.
저자들은 전자서적 출판을 통해 소비자들에게 책을 직접 판매할 수 있을 것으로 예상하고 있다. 한편 출판업자들은 인쇄설비와 서점을 갖추지 않고도 디지털파일 형태로 책을 판매할 수 있을 것으로 기대하고 있다. 그리고 온라인 도서유통업체들은 전자서적을 제작, 판매하기 시작했다. 수많은 신생 닷컴기업들은 수천 권의 도서 및 정기간행물을 디지털파일로 저장해 놓고 판매에 나설 계획이다. 또한 전자서적의 무단복제를 차단하기 위해 기술관련 기업들이 몰려들고 있다.
전자서적의 판매수익 배분과 관련한 저자와 출판업자간의 갈등도 두드러지고 있다. 출판업체들은 전자서적에 대한 권리를 획득하기 위해 노력해 왔으나, 결국 저자와 에이전트가 전자서적에 대한 권리를 가지게 되었다.
전자서적의 도입으로 지난 수십 년간 지속된 출판업자와 도서판매업체간의 갈등이 다소 완화될 것으로 보인다. 그 이유는 소비자에 대한 직접적인 판매가 가능해짐에 따라 판매업체의 비중이 줄어들 것이기 때문이다.
NetLibrary, Questia, Ebrary 등의 닷컴기업들은 디지털 책의 컨텐츠를 판매하기 위한 대안을 개발하고 있다. 이들은 독자들이 제목 뿐만 아니라 본문까지도 검색을 할 수 있는 가상 도서관 서비스를 구축하기 위해 경쟁하고 있다. 현재 NetLibrary는 유료로 도서관에 전자책을 판매하고 있다.
무엇보다도 화면에서 책을 읽게 하고 출판하는 것과 관련된 기술적 표준을 확립하기 위한 Microsoft, Adobe Systems, Gemstar-TV Guide International간의 경쟁이 가장 치열하다. 그리고 보안문제를 해결하는 것도 주요과제로 남아 있다.
(원문)
The New York Times , November 27, 2000
Struggles Over E-Books Abound
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
There is something not entirely rational about the book industry's current love affair with electronic books. Few people have ever read a whole book on a screen. No one knows how many people will ever want to. And book publishers have been burned before: A decade ago, book publishers produced thousands of electronic books on computer discs with game-like interactive features, pictures and sounds, but consumers were not interested.
Nevertheless, major book publishers, technology companies, online booksellers and new electronic book middlemen are betting hundreds of millions of dollars this year on the future market for digital books. In the latest twist, the media and technology company Gemstar-TV Guide International is in talks with the nation's largest bookstore chain, Barnes & Noble, about a range of ventures that may include a merger or acquisition, a deal that would make sense only if electronic books became a truly significant business.
What is the rush? Absent a clear sense of the future, digital publishing has become a Rorschach test for the book business. Authors, publishers and booksellers see in digital books their own fantasies and nightmares, usually shaped by the antagonisms of decades past. Their cherished hope is that electronic books will open new markets and create new sales for their books the way that early paperbacks did in the 1930's. After decades of bruising battles among agents, publishers and booksellers over the stagnant revenue from slow-growing book sales, no one wants to see their rivals get a jump on them.
Already, the battles over the structure of the nascent digital book business are taking shape as industry players race to stake their claims in the new territory, often on overlapping turf. Authors like Stephen King see electronic books as a way to sell books directly to consumers, freeing them from dependence on publishers. Publishers, in turn, see a chance to cut out printers and even bookstores: they are printing books in their warehouses from digital files and selling electronic editions to interested readers on the Internet. In return, online booksellers like Barnesandnoble.com are moving into the publishers' business, printing digitized books themselves and selling their own electronic editions. Meanwhile, a handful of fast-growing start-ups are racing to sell the contents of books in an entirely new way, through huge digital archives of thousands of books and periodicals available online, liberated from the confines of their covers.
The industry's ultimate nightmare is that digital books will go the way of digital music: circulating for free over the Internet, at the mercy of pirates and hackers. To ward off publishers' fears, a host of technology companies are jockeying to insert themselves into digital publishing as profitable middlemen, taking the place occupied by distributors of traditional books. They provide protection from copying along with elaborate software and services to store and transmit digital books, in exchange for a cut of book sales revenue.
In short, everyone at the table has an eye on someone else's plate, even before the food has arrived. Some think it could be a long wait. Daniel O'Brien, an analyst who studies electronic books for Forrester Research, calls electronic books a solution in search of a problem. "Our research with consumers indicates very little interest in reading on a screen," he said."Maybe someday, but not in a five-year time frame. Books are pretty elegant."
Still, many in the industry are more sanguine. "Publishers are by nature optimists," said Jack Romanos, president of Simon & Schuster, one of the first traditional publishers to begin selling electronic books. "The logic of electronic books is pretty hard to refute ?we see it as an incremental increase in sales as a new form of books for adults and especially for the next generation of readers. The publisher's ultimate responsibility is to get the work to the greatest possible audience, and this is one more swing at the plate."
Authors vs. PublishersDividing the Take
In a Zero-Sum Game
Whenever two or more authors are in the same room, the conversation eventually turns to the failings of publishers: low advances, stingy marketing, hasty editing and, most of all, rejection letters. On the other hand, publishers complain that authors are unrealistic, squeezing their profit margins to the bone by demanding enormous advances on their royalties.
Their continuing tug of war has turned into one of the pivotal opening skirmishes over the future of electronic books. Authors, and would-be authors, were among the first to seize on digital technology as a way around traditional publishing's onerous printing and production costs. Confounding the expectations of the established houses, a few frustrated authors have even managed to turn a profit by publishing other writers' electronic books ?selling other publishers' rejects with almost no marketing.
Hard Shell Word Factory, for example, an electronic book publisher run by a former aspiring romance writer, sells about 6,000 electronic books a month, usually downloaded for about $5 apiece, from an online catalog of roughly 200 romances, mysteries and science fiction novels. Booklocker.com, run by another writer, sells about 1,200 books a month for $10 to $15 each, many of them popular novels and how-to books. Stephen King made headlines when he self-published his electronic serial novel "The Plant."
Random House took the potential for new authors to publish online seriously enough that it acquired a stake in Xlibris, an author-financed digital publisher that now issues more books in a year than Random House. But publishers say they are not worried that big-name authors will try to go it alone any time soon. "They will ultimately figure out that many aspects of electronic publishing ?the customer service, the transactions, billing, collecting ?are not all that interesting, not all that simple and pretty time consuming," said Mr. Romanos of Simon & Schuster, a unit of Viacom that publishes Mr. King.
But the attention to Mr. King's electronic experiments has revived a long-running battle between authors and publishers over how to split the putative proceeds from sales of digital books.
After the success of Mr. King's novella, Bertelsmann's Random House subsidiary, Simon & Schuster and Time Warner's book division fanned out to agents around New York to make deals for digital rights. Only in recent years and only with mixed success have publishers pushed to obtain the rights to digital editions in their initial contracts for authors' books, so most digital rights were retained by authors and agents. To complicate matters, publishers looking for digital rights sometimes poached authors from rival houses, signing deals to publish electronic versions of other publishers' printed books as Time Warner did when it published a digital edition of James Gleick's "Faster," originally by Random House's Pantheon imprint.
But as publishers and agents settled into their tables at industry hubs like Michael's and the Four Seasons, neither side knew where to start. There is no industry standard for compensating authors for the digital versions of their works. Should authors receive 10 percent of the cover price, as they do on the first sales of their hardcover books? Authors' agents pushed for far more, accusing publishers of trying to grab the savings from eliminating printing or distribution costs.
When Random House introduced its first digital book imprint, it initially signed deals paying authors a royalty on electronic books of 15 percent of the retail price. Time Warner used a different formula ?a quarter of the publisher's revenue, which comes out to about 12.5 percent of the retail price in the customary arrangements with booksellers. Simon & Schuster signed deals for a variety of rates around the same range. (No one knows how much to charge consumers for an electronic book, either. Some publishers are setting prices for electronic books just below their printed equivalents, but others charge hardcover prices for some electronic editions.)
This month, however, Random House startled the industry by essentially capitulating to its authors' demands. Random House announced that it would split equally with authors the wholesale revenue from selling or licensing their electronic books ?effectively raising the author's share of the list price to 25 percent from 15 percent under the current arrangements with booksellers. Random House executives even hinted that online booksellers might also lower their cut of the retail price for electronic books, which would further increase the author's take.
Other major publishers scoffed in disbelief. As the largest English-language publisher, Random House has a considerable impact on the market for manuscripts. But the major publishers' digital initiatives are deep in the red, spending heavily on technology with few sales to show for it. So far, none of Random House's rivals have matched its 50-50 revenue split. "I don't think that 50 percent to the author gives the publisher a chance to breathe," said Laurence Kirshbaum, chairman of the book division of Time Warner, another major electronic- book publisher.
Random House executives say the company's decision was as much a defense against potential future threats as a response to the current state of affairs. They wanted mainly to be sure that no one else stepped ahead of them in the race to figure out the potential new market. And Random House especially wanted to keep rivals from making deals with its authors. A few small start-ups, without the marketing resources of a major publisher, had offered authors a similar 50- 50 split. More threateningly, Barnesandnoble.com executives have discussed similar arrangements with agents as the company considers its digital publishing plans.
Booksellers vs. PublishersSeeking to Shorten
The Supply Chain
Publishers and bookstore chains have been stuck in a bad marriage for decades. Publishers have privately complained for years about the superstore chains, resentful of the power of their buying and merchandising decisions and bitter about the fees they charge to promote books in their stores and advertisements. Big booksellers, on the other hand, retort that it is publishers who hold the power, since they decide what to publish, control the copyrights to popular books and set cover prices.
After years of feeling captive to bookstore chains, publishers have quietly seized on electronic books as a way to sell directly to consumers. Random House, Time Warner's book division and Simon & Schuster have all taken steps in that direction.
"Digital publishing presents an opportunity for publishers to have a much closer connection to consumers," said Mr. Romanos of Simon & Schuster. "I don't believe we will not have retailers, but certainly the middleman component will be a smaller one."
Some publishers are already selling digital books directly to consumers by offering customized editions with mix-and-match contents, especially in the educational publishing market. This fall, McGraw-Hill's Primis Custom Publishing division created a Web site to let professors select chapters and excerpts from an archive of books and other texts to build their own personalized electronic volumes ?ordering directly and sidestepping campus bookstores. Guidebook publishers have similar plans.
Random House's Modern Library classics division plans to sell electronic editions of its books directly to readers through links to literary Web sites like those devoted to Shakespeare or Jane Austin. Time Warner will begin selling its electronic books through links to its own Web site early next year, although Mr. Kirshbaum, the Time Warner book division chairman, plays down the threat to its biggest customers. "The Barnesandnoble.com's of the world are going to be our meal ticket for some time to come," he said.
Barnesandnoble.com plans to return fire by publishing and printing its own digital books. Beaten to Internet bookselling by Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com has spent heavily to be ahead in the business of selling and publishing digital books.
Barnes & Noble and its sister company Barnesandnoble.com have invested in several digital publishing and bookselling start- ups, including buying Fatbrain.com and acquiring major stakes in iUniverse and MightyWords.com. MightyWords, a publisher and online retailer of digital books, has provoked Simon & Schuster's ire by trying to publish works by its authors; Simon & Schuster retaliated by excluding MightyWords from selling copies of Stephen King's popular electronic book, "Riding the Bullet."
Barnesandnoble.com and Barnes & Noble are also becoming digital printers and publishers themselves. The companies have installed print-on-demand equipment in their warehouses so that early next year they can begin printing and binding their own copies of books available from publishers as digital files, cutting out the printer and distributor. Publishers such as the Perseus Books Group and distributors, notably the Ingram Book Group's Lightning Source, have also installed print-on-demand equipment, and will compete over where in the supply chain the printing takes place.
Michael Fragnito, a former publisher of Viking Studio Books and senior vice president for production at Viking-Penguin, was hired in May to jump start Barnesandnoble.com's digital publishing program. For years, Barnes & Noble has printed its own list of classics and other books with expired copyrights for sale in its stores, often annoying publishers by undercutting their prices. Now, BarnesandNoble.com is moving aggressively into the unknown terrain of digital books. At the very least, Mr. Fragnito, said the company planned to sell thousands of books with expired copyrights as digital books and might add electronic versions of newer books, too.
Amazon.com, which recently opened its own electronic bookstore, has challenged publishers on other fronts, by offering access to its customers and its transaction services to authors who want to self-publish either print or electronic editions. The authors M. J. Rose and Seth Godin have both made names for themselves by self-publishing through Amazon.com.
Dueling Archives Setting Up Shelves
In Virtual Libraries
At least three start-ups are currently racing to build an alternative way to sell the contents of digital books, as part of large online archives that let readers search through texts as well as browse their titles. Each of the main contenders is pursuing a different strategy, but they are competing fiercely for publishers' digital books because the biggest collection will have the greatest appeal to readers.
NetLibrary, the best-established for-profit digital archive, this summer filed preliminary plans to test the stock market's enthusiasm for electronic books with an initial public offering, which it has not yet made. Its main business is selling electronic books to libraries, with online access to a copy of the book on NetLibrary's computer servers for either an annual or one-time fee. A library's patrons can search through the contents of all the books in that library's online collection from any location, although only one patron can use a title at a time. Users cannot copy or print books, either ?a key point with publishers worried that too much access could hurt book sales.
So far, more than 70 public libraries, including New York's, have signed up, along with more than 1,000 university libraries and a few corporations like Sun Microsystems and Disney. NetLibrary's total catalog of books now stands at 32,000 from 250 publishers, including Oxford University Press and John Wiley & Sons. In the third quarter, NetLibrary passed along to publishers about $2.2 million from sales to libraries of their electronic books.
Neither of its competitors, companies called Questia and Ebrary, are currently operating, but both are frantically striking deals with publishers to enlarge their own collections. Questia, founded two years ago, will open for business in January. It hopes to sell to students access to the contents of an archive of digital books for a subscription fee for $20 to $30 a month. Its service also comes with a variety of research software, like links connecting footnotes in one book with text in another. Its biggest advantage is its collection of 50,000 books from a variety of academic and educational publishers and the pile of over $130 million in cash it has raised. Questia plans to pay 5 to 10 percent of its subscription fees to publishers, divided according to how much their books are used.
Ebrary, the third contender, took a leap forward this fall when it simultaneously sold minority stakes to three of the biggest English-language publishers ?Random House, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson's Viking- Penguin. All three now have an incentive to help Ebrary succeed.
Ebrary plans to be part archive, part showcase for publishers. Aiming for general readers as well as researchers, Ebrary's system lets readers search and browse for free through an online archive of digital books and magazines. But publishers can restrict access to 20 percent at a time of certain books, and they can set prices for consumers to pay to print pages, copy sections or download electronic books. Ebrary says it will pass 60 percent of its revenue to publishers. And Ebrary provides links to several online retailers so customers can buy the old-fashioned printed editions ?publishers' main business.
The Software Race If They Do Read,
How Will They Do It?
Perhaps the most visible contest over the future of digital publishing is the heated competition among three technology companies hoping to set the standards for publishing and reading books on screens. Microsoft, Adobe Systems and Gemstar-TV Guide International are all rushing to convince publishers and readers that their format is the most secure from copying, convenient to use and the easy on the eyes. To publishers' delight, they are also spending lavishly to promote their rival systems, often promoting authors and books in the process.
Adobe Systems has by far the largest share of the digital publishing software market. Customers have downloaded over 180 million free copies of its software for reading and printing digital documents. Adobe also recently acquired technology to make digital type easier to read. But Adobe has recently fallen behind in the rush to make deals with book publishers and attract new readers.
Microsoft's greatest strength is its enormous resources as the dominant provider of computer operating systems. It has campaigned aggressively for public attention. But it was just this summer that it released its software for reading electronic books on desktop computers, making it a relatively late entry into the market.
Microsoft and Adobe provide similar systems for seling electronic books. Customers download a digital file over the Internet, and the software maker receives about 3 percent of the book's retail price.
Henry Yuen, founder and chairman of Gemstar, has a different plan. Unlike his rivals, his company holds patents on the technology to read digital books on specialized hand-held devices. Mr. Yuen is betting that these devices, easily portable with lower prices and high-quality screens, will appeal to consumers more than expensive personal computers or small personal digital assistants. But Gemstar's devices are not cheap yet. The latest generation, built under the RCA brand by Thomson Multimedia, is appearing in electronics stores this week at the lofty price of about $300.
Mr. Yuen's pitch to publishers preys on their fears about Internet hackers. "The reality of the matter is that you cannot put things on the Internet ?I don't care how strong the encryption scheme, it is going to be broken one way or the other," he said.
Gemstar's system avoids both personal computers and the Internet all together. Online bookstores sell electronic books for Gemstar's format, but to download the digital texts consumers need to plug their hand- held devices into phone lines and dial directly into Gemstar's central computer servers. As exclusive distributor of electronic books for its format, Gemstar will collect a hefty 15 to 20 percent fee on each sale.
Gemstar's system also means that users of the devices will store and retrieve all their books on Gemstar's computer server. Mr. Yuen hopes to sell advertising they will see while they are there, and Gemstar may sell them electronic books directly, too. He plans to enable them to shop through his devices by downloading catalogs, making a commission on each sale.
Eventually, Mr. Yuen envisions devices built with Gemstar's electronic book reading patents to blossom into personal organizers, wireless pagers and phones and generalized portable entertainment devices for text, video and sound. "I would like this particular well-documented habit ?reading ?to be my entry into the consumer mobile-device arena," Mr. Yuen said.
저자들은 전자서적 출판을 통해 소비자들에게 책을 직접 판매할 수 있을 것으로 예상하고 있다. 한편 출판업자들은 인쇄설비와 서점을 갖추지 않고도 디지털파일 형태로 책을 판매할 수 있을 것으로 기대하고 있다. 그리고 온라인 도서유통업체들은 전자서적을 제작, 판매하기 시작했다. 수많은 신생 닷컴기업들은 수천 권의 도서 및 정기간행물을 디지털파일로 저장해 놓고 판매에 나설 계획이다. 또한 전자서적의 무단복제를 차단하기 위해 기술관련 기업들이 몰려들고 있다.
전자서적의 판매수익 배분과 관련한 저자와 출판업자간의 갈등도 두드러지고 있다. 출판업체들은 전자서적에 대한 권리를 획득하기 위해 노력해 왔으나, 결국 저자와 에이전트가 전자서적에 대한 권리를 가지게 되었다.
전자서적의 도입으로 지난 수십 년간 지속된 출판업자와 도서판매업체간의 갈등이 다소 완화될 것으로 보인다. 그 이유는 소비자에 대한 직접적인 판매가 가능해짐에 따라 판매업체의 비중이 줄어들 것이기 때문이다.
NetLibrary, Questia, Ebrary 등의 닷컴기업들은 디지털 책의 컨텐츠를 판매하기 위한 대안을 개발하고 있다. 이들은 독자들이 제목 뿐만 아니라 본문까지도 검색을 할 수 있는 가상 도서관 서비스를 구축하기 위해 경쟁하고 있다. 현재 NetLibrary는 유료로 도서관에 전자책을 판매하고 있다.
무엇보다도 화면에서 책을 읽게 하고 출판하는 것과 관련된 기술적 표준을 확립하기 위한 Microsoft, Adobe Systems, Gemstar-TV Guide International간의 경쟁이 가장 치열하다. 그리고 보안문제를 해결하는 것도 주요과제로 남아 있다.
(원문)
The New York Times , November 27, 2000
Struggles Over E-Books Abound
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
There is something not entirely rational about the book industry's current love affair with electronic books. Few people have ever read a whole book on a screen. No one knows how many people will ever want to. And book publishers have been burned before: A decade ago, book publishers produced thousands of electronic books on computer discs with game-like interactive features, pictures and sounds, but consumers were not interested.
Nevertheless, major book publishers, technology companies, online booksellers and new electronic book middlemen are betting hundreds of millions of dollars this year on the future market for digital books. In the latest twist, the media and technology company Gemstar-TV Guide International is in talks with the nation's largest bookstore chain, Barnes & Noble, about a range of ventures that may include a merger or acquisition, a deal that would make sense only if electronic books became a truly significant business.
What is the rush? Absent a clear sense of the future, digital publishing has become a Rorschach test for the book business. Authors, publishers and booksellers see in digital books their own fantasies and nightmares, usually shaped by the antagonisms of decades past. Their cherished hope is that electronic books will open new markets and create new sales for their books the way that early paperbacks did in the 1930's. After decades of bruising battles among agents, publishers and booksellers over the stagnant revenue from slow-growing book sales, no one wants to see their rivals get a jump on them.
Already, the battles over the structure of the nascent digital book business are taking shape as industry players race to stake their claims in the new territory, often on overlapping turf. Authors like Stephen King see electronic books as a way to sell books directly to consumers, freeing them from dependence on publishers. Publishers, in turn, see a chance to cut out printers and even bookstores: they are printing books in their warehouses from digital files and selling electronic editions to interested readers on the Internet. In return, online booksellers like Barnesandnoble.com are moving into the publishers' business, printing digitized books themselves and selling their own electronic editions. Meanwhile, a handful of fast-growing start-ups are racing to sell the contents of books in an entirely new way, through huge digital archives of thousands of books and periodicals available online, liberated from the confines of their covers.
The industry's ultimate nightmare is that digital books will go the way of digital music: circulating for free over the Internet, at the mercy of pirates and hackers. To ward off publishers' fears, a host of technology companies are jockeying to insert themselves into digital publishing as profitable middlemen, taking the place occupied by distributors of traditional books. They provide protection from copying along with elaborate software and services to store and transmit digital books, in exchange for a cut of book sales revenue.
In short, everyone at the table has an eye on someone else's plate, even before the food has arrived. Some think it could be a long wait. Daniel O'Brien, an analyst who studies electronic books for Forrester Research, calls electronic books a solution in search of a problem. "Our research with consumers indicates very little interest in reading on a screen," he said."Maybe someday, but not in a five-year time frame. Books are pretty elegant."
Still, many in the industry are more sanguine. "Publishers are by nature optimists," said Jack Romanos, president of Simon & Schuster, one of the first traditional publishers to begin selling electronic books. "The logic of electronic books is pretty hard to refute ?we see it as an incremental increase in sales as a new form of books for adults and especially for the next generation of readers. The publisher's ultimate responsibility is to get the work to the greatest possible audience, and this is one more swing at the plate."
Authors vs. PublishersDividing the Take
In a Zero-Sum Game
Whenever two or more authors are in the same room, the conversation eventually turns to the failings of publishers: low advances, stingy marketing, hasty editing and, most of all, rejection letters. On the other hand, publishers complain that authors are unrealistic, squeezing their profit margins to the bone by demanding enormous advances on their royalties.
Their continuing tug of war has turned into one of the pivotal opening skirmishes over the future of electronic books. Authors, and would-be authors, were among the first to seize on digital technology as a way around traditional publishing's onerous printing and production costs. Confounding the expectations of the established houses, a few frustrated authors have even managed to turn a profit by publishing other writers' electronic books ?selling other publishers' rejects with almost no marketing.
Hard Shell Word Factory, for example, an electronic book publisher run by a former aspiring romance writer, sells about 6,000 electronic books a month, usually downloaded for about $5 apiece, from an online catalog of roughly 200 romances, mysteries and science fiction novels. Booklocker.com, run by another writer, sells about 1,200 books a month for $10 to $15 each, many of them popular novels and how-to books. Stephen King made headlines when he self-published his electronic serial novel "The Plant."
Random House took the potential for new authors to publish online seriously enough that it acquired a stake in Xlibris, an author-financed digital publisher that now issues more books in a year than Random House. But publishers say they are not worried that big-name authors will try to go it alone any time soon. "They will ultimately figure out that many aspects of electronic publishing ?the customer service, the transactions, billing, collecting ?are not all that interesting, not all that simple and pretty time consuming," said Mr. Romanos of Simon & Schuster, a unit of Viacom that publishes Mr. King.
But the attention to Mr. King's electronic experiments has revived a long-running battle between authors and publishers over how to split the putative proceeds from sales of digital books.
After the success of Mr. King's novella, Bertelsmann's Random House subsidiary, Simon & Schuster and Time Warner's book division fanned out to agents around New York to make deals for digital rights. Only in recent years and only with mixed success have publishers pushed to obtain the rights to digital editions in their initial contracts for authors' books, so most digital rights were retained by authors and agents. To complicate matters, publishers looking for digital rights sometimes poached authors from rival houses, signing deals to publish electronic versions of other publishers' printed books as Time Warner did when it published a digital edition of James Gleick's "Faster," originally by Random House's Pantheon imprint.
But as publishers and agents settled into their tables at industry hubs like Michael's and the Four Seasons, neither side knew where to start. There is no industry standard for compensating authors for the digital versions of their works. Should authors receive 10 percent of the cover price, as they do on the first sales of their hardcover books? Authors' agents pushed for far more, accusing publishers of trying to grab the savings from eliminating printing or distribution costs.
When Random House introduced its first digital book imprint, it initially signed deals paying authors a royalty on electronic books of 15 percent of the retail price. Time Warner used a different formula ?a quarter of the publisher's revenue, which comes out to about 12.5 percent of the retail price in the customary arrangements with booksellers. Simon & Schuster signed deals for a variety of rates around the same range. (No one knows how much to charge consumers for an electronic book, either. Some publishers are setting prices for electronic books just below their printed equivalents, but others charge hardcover prices for some electronic editions.)
This month, however, Random House startled the industry by essentially capitulating to its authors' demands. Random House announced that it would split equally with authors the wholesale revenue from selling or licensing their electronic books ?effectively raising the author's share of the list price to 25 percent from 15 percent under the current arrangements with booksellers. Random House executives even hinted that online booksellers might also lower their cut of the retail price for electronic books, which would further increase the author's take.
Other major publishers scoffed in disbelief. As the largest English-language publisher, Random House has a considerable impact on the market for manuscripts. But the major publishers' digital initiatives are deep in the red, spending heavily on technology with few sales to show for it. So far, none of Random House's rivals have matched its 50-50 revenue split. "I don't think that 50 percent to the author gives the publisher a chance to breathe," said Laurence Kirshbaum, chairman of the book division of Time Warner, another major electronic- book publisher.
Random House executives say the company's decision was as much a defense against potential future threats as a response to the current state of affairs. They wanted mainly to be sure that no one else stepped ahead of them in the race to figure out the potential new market. And Random House especially wanted to keep rivals from making deals with its authors. A few small start-ups, without the marketing resources of a major publisher, had offered authors a similar 50- 50 split. More threateningly, Barnesandnoble.com executives have discussed similar arrangements with agents as the company considers its digital publishing plans.
Booksellers vs. PublishersSeeking to Shorten
The Supply Chain
Publishers and bookstore chains have been stuck in a bad marriage for decades. Publishers have privately complained for years about the superstore chains, resentful of the power of their buying and merchandising decisions and bitter about the fees they charge to promote books in their stores and advertisements. Big booksellers, on the other hand, retort that it is publishers who hold the power, since they decide what to publish, control the copyrights to popular books and set cover prices.
After years of feeling captive to bookstore chains, publishers have quietly seized on electronic books as a way to sell directly to consumers. Random House, Time Warner's book division and Simon & Schuster have all taken steps in that direction.
"Digital publishing presents an opportunity for publishers to have a much closer connection to consumers," said Mr. Romanos of Simon & Schuster. "I don't believe we will not have retailers, but certainly the middleman component will be a smaller one."
Some publishers are already selling digital books directly to consumers by offering customized editions with mix-and-match contents, especially in the educational publishing market. This fall, McGraw-Hill's Primis Custom Publishing division created a Web site to let professors select chapters and excerpts from an archive of books and other texts to build their own personalized electronic volumes ?ordering directly and sidestepping campus bookstores. Guidebook publishers have similar plans.
Random House's Modern Library classics division plans to sell electronic editions of its books directly to readers through links to literary Web sites like those devoted to Shakespeare or Jane Austin. Time Warner will begin selling its electronic books through links to its own Web site early next year, although Mr. Kirshbaum, the Time Warner book division chairman, plays down the threat to its biggest customers. "The Barnesandnoble.com's of the world are going to be our meal ticket for some time to come," he said.
Barnesandnoble.com plans to return fire by publishing and printing its own digital books. Beaten to Internet bookselling by Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com has spent heavily to be ahead in the business of selling and publishing digital books.
Barnes & Noble and its sister company Barnesandnoble.com have invested in several digital publishing and bookselling start- ups, including buying Fatbrain.com and acquiring major stakes in iUniverse and MightyWords.com. MightyWords, a publisher and online retailer of digital books, has provoked Simon & Schuster's ire by trying to publish works by its authors; Simon & Schuster retaliated by excluding MightyWords from selling copies of Stephen King's popular electronic book, "Riding the Bullet."
Barnesandnoble.com and Barnes & Noble are also becoming digital printers and publishers themselves. The companies have installed print-on-demand equipment in their warehouses so that early next year they can begin printing and binding their own copies of books available from publishers as digital files, cutting out the printer and distributor. Publishers such as the Perseus Books Group and distributors, notably the Ingram Book Group's Lightning Source, have also installed print-on-demand equipment, and will compete over where in the supply chain the printing takes place.
Michael Fragnito, a former publisher of Viking Studio Books and senior vice president for production at Viking-Penguin, was hired in May to jump start Barnesandnoble.com's digital publishing program. For years, Barnes & Noble has printed its own list of classics and other books with expired copyrights for sale in its stores, often annoying publishers by undercutting their prices. Now, BarnesandNoble.com is moving aggressively into the unknown terrain of digital books. At the very least, Mr. Fragnito, said the company planned to sell thousands of books with expired copyrights as digital books and might add electronic versions of newer books, too.
Amazon.com, which recently opened its own electronic bookstore, has challenged publishers on other fronts, by offering access to its customers and its transaction services to authors who want to self-publish either print or electronic editions. The authors M. J. Rose and Seth Godin have both made names for themselves by self-publishing through Amazon.com.
Dueling Archives Setting Up Shelves
In Virtual Libraries
At least three start-ups are currently racing to build an alternative way to sell the contents of digital books, as part of large online archives that let readers search through texts as well as browse their titles. Each of the main contenders is pursuing a different strategy, but they are competing fiercely for publishers' digital books because the biggest collection will have the greatest appeal to readers.
NetLibrary, the best-established for-profit digital archive, this summer filed preliminary plans to test the stock market's enthusiasm for electronic books with an initial public offering, which it has not yet made. Its main business is selling electronic books to libraries, with online access to a copy of the book on NetLibrary's computer servers for either an annual or one-time fee. A library's patrons can search through the contents of all the books in that library's online collection from any location, although only one patron can use a title at a time. Users cannot copy or print books, either ?a key point with publishers worried that too much access could hurt book sales.
So far, more than 70 public libraries, including New York's, have signed up, along with more than 1,000 university libraries and a few corporations like Sun Microsystems and Disney. NetLibrary's total catalog of books now stands at 32,000 from 250 publishers, including Oxford University Press and John Wiley & Sons. In the third quarter, NetLibrary passed along to publishers about $2.2 million from sales to libraries of their electronic books.
Neither of its competitors, companies called Questia and Ebrary, are currently operating, but both are frantically striking deals with publishers to enlarge their own collections. Questia, founded two years ago, will open for business in January. It hopes to sell to students access to the contents of an archive of digital books for a subscription fee for $20 to $30 a month. Its service also comes with a variety of research software, like links connecting footnotes in one book with text in another. Its biggest advantage is its collection of 50,000 books from a variety of academic and educational publishers and the pile of over $130 million in cash it has raised. Questia plans to pay 5 to 10 percent of its subscription fees to publishers, divided according to how much their books are used.
Ebrary, the third contender, took a leap forward this fall when it simultaneously sold minority stakes to three of the biggest English-language publishers ?Random House, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson's Viking- Penguin. All three now have an incentive to help Ebrary succeed.
Ebrary plans to be part archive, part showcase for publishers. Aiming for general readers as well as researchers, Ebrary's system lets readers search and browse for free through an online archive of digital books and magazines. But publishers can restrict access to 20 percent at a time of certain books, and they can set prices for consumers to pay to print pages, copy sections or download electronic books. Ebrary says it will pass 60 percent of its revenue to publishers. And Ebrary provides links to several online retailers so customers can buy the old-fashioned printed editions ?publishers' main business.
The Software Race If They Do Read,
How Will They Do It?
Perhaps the most visible contest over the future of digital publishing is the heated competition among three technology companies hoping to set the standards for publishing and reading books on screens. Microsoft, Adobe Systems and Gemstar-TV Guide International are all rushing to convince publishers and readers that their format is the most secure from copying, convenient to use and the easy on the eyes. To publishers' delight, they are also spending lavishly to promote their rival systems, often promoting authors and books in the process.
Adobe Systems has by far the largest share of the digital publishing software market. Customers have downloaded over 180 million free copies of its software for reading and printing digital documents. Adobe also recently acquired technology to make digital type easier to read. But Adobe has recently fallen behind in the rush to make deals with book publishers and attract new readers.
Microsoft's greatest strength is its enormous resources as the dominant provider of computer operating systems. It has campaigned aggressively for public attention. But it was just this summer that it released its software for reading electronic books on desktop computers, making it a relatively late entry into the market.
Microsoft and Adobe provide similar systems for seling electronic books. Customers download a digital file over the Internet, and the software maker receives about 3 percent of the book's retail price.
Henry Yuen, founder and chairman of Gemstar, has a different plan. Unlike his rivals, his company holds patents on the technology to read digital books on specialized hand-held devices. Mr. Yuen is betting that these devices, easily portable with lower prices and high-quality screens, will appeal to consumers more than expensive personal computers or small personal digital assistants. But Gemstar's devices are not cheap yet. The latest generation, built under the RCA brand by Thomson Multimedia, is appearing in electronics stores this week at the lofty price of about $300.
Mr. Yuen's pitch to publishers preys on their fears about Internet hackers. "The reality of the matter is that you cannot put things on the Internet ?I don't care how strong the encryption scheme, it is going to be broken one way or the other," he said.
Gemstar's system avoids both personal computers and the Internet all together. Online bookstores sell electronic books for Gemstar's format, but to download the digital texts consumers need to plug their hand- held devices into phone lines and dial directly into Gemstar's central computer servers. As exclusive distributor of electronic books for its format, Gemstar will collect a hefty 15 to 20 percent fee on each sale.
Gemstar's system also means that users of the devices will store and retrieve all their books on Gemstar's computer server. Mr. Yuen hopes to sell advertising they will see while they are there, and Gemstar may sell them electronic books directly, too. He plans to enable them to shop through his devices by downloading catalogs, making a commission on each sale.
Eventually, Mr. Yuen envisions devices built with Gemstar's electronic book reading patents to blossom into personal organizers, wireless pagers and phones and generalized portable entertainment devices for text, video and sound. "I would like this particular well-documented habit ?reading ?to be my entry into the consumer mobile-device arena," Mr. Yuen said.
'형설지공 > 경제경영' 카테고리의 다른 글
| 우리 나라의 전자화폐 (0) | 2001.01.25 |
|---|---|
| 기존 광고매체의 킬러 Yahoo! (0) | 2001.01.25 |
| New Economy를 지배하는 10가지 원리 (0) | 2001.01.25 |
| New Economy에서 새로운 게 무엇인가? (0) | 2001.01.25 |
| 소비자 행태에 따른 전자상거래 전략 수립 (0) | 2001.01.25 |