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the licensing - is growing. Only the publishers of the silver discs (that
silly old way we used to sell music to consumers) are struggling - and
the retailers of those discs.” ' (Page, 2009).
Piracy and illegal downloading of e-books is clearly a problem, yet one
of the most vexed issues in the debate is digital rights management
(DRM). It is perhaps instructive that, since music companies began
dropping DRM, sales of legal downloads have risen steadily. In 2004,
according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry,
global downloads were worth $400m (£280m) at retail value, while in
2008 that figure stood at $3.7bn (£2.6bn) (Tivnan, 2009). Most
publishers, however, continue to deliver e-book content protected by
DRM. Springer is a notable exception, offering 30,000 DRM-free e-books
within flat-pricing models based on an institution's size (Ernst, 2009).
The market for e-books, although growing rapidly, is still less than 1%
of the total publishing business (Neilan, 2009). Amazon's Bezos believes
that an e-book should be substantially cheaper than the print book, a
view which has not always been accepted by the traditional publishing
industry. In the UK, Hachette plans to sell at 'no more than 10% off the
physical price', while Australian publisher Allen & Unwin sells its e-books
at approximately 80% of print RRP (Evans, 2009).
So what e-price is right? Again, the jury is still out. But one would
have to agree with the Australian Booksellers Association's CEO that
'fundamentally e-books won't work unless they're considerably cheaper
than the paper product. The consumer hasn't been trained to expect
digital product to be the same prices as physical product' (Evans, 2009).
One possible outcome could be a largely free corpus of material, for and
from academics and students, within internet frameworks at one end of
the e-book spectrum, with both subscription and micropayments at the
other. In this respect, there are similarities with trends in the serials
area. Key players in these debates will be Google and Amazon. Paul
Aiken, the Executive Director of the US Authors Guild, states that
ultimately 'there might be one very dominant player who could squeeze
most of the profits out of this new market', which 'is frightening for
authors and publishers' (Stone and Rich, 2009).
Conclusion
Ray Bradbury once said, in the context of his book
Fahrenheit 451
, 'You
