Photo: Wesley Fryer / Flickr

Like music before it, the film industry’s transition to digital has been ravaged with widespread piracy. Unlike said film industry, the eBooks market has seen very little piracy to date. For media owners, and tech consumers alike, it’s worth exploring why this is so.

Giving credit where it’s due

This article was inspired by a similar article in ReadWriteWeb, so it’s worth reading that one for greater context on the issue. While that article examines whether the present day pricing of ebooks will force people down the piracy route, we’re more interested in a to-the-point answer on why ebook piracy isn’t more widespread already.

Having said that, the ReadWriteWeb article, which itself was inspired by a Reddit thread, serves as a great jump off point for our post, making the case that major eBooks, when compared to paperbacks, are ridiculously priced.

More specifically, The Book Thief, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner are just a few examples of ebooks that cost more than their hardcover equivalents. Given how much cheaper it is to distribute digital copies than it is to manufacture, print and distribute physical copies, this should strike you as immediately ridiculous, and as a reason for ebook piracy to be on the up, right?

It’s simple: book piracy is really difficult

Perhaps you’ll think this a cop out, but the primary reason ebook piracy is not more widespread, I believe, is that it is a little difficult right now. While with music, and video content, people very quickly settled on a format of choice, the same has not happened with ebooks. Given that iBooks is a proprietary format, as is Amazon’s Kindle content, and then add ePub to the mix and even PDF, and you’ll see why it’s been difficult to get people to focus on one format for distributing books.

What’s more, the fact that different ebook readers can only support certain formats – i.e., those that are not proprietary – only further increases the difficulty of ebook piracy. This may be a stroke an accidental stroke of genius by the makers of ebook readers, or just a temporary solution pirates may work their way around.

Buy content

We can’t pretend piracy does not exist, but we still encourage you to buy content. A lot of love, effort, and money goes into writing a book, recording an album, or producing a film, and while it’s easy to justify illegally downloading a digital copy, it is worth remembering that it is putting many creators out of work.

This is not ideal, and so, regardless of why ebook piracy isn’t that widespread, we hope it never becomes widespread. Yet publishers seriously need to pass their savings on manufacturing costs off to consumers.

Photo: goXunuReviews / Flickr

We’ve chronicled the sharp rise of eBooks with awe over the last two years. From a nascent format that’s been around for some time, but wasn’t embraced wholesale until recently, the eBook has since transformed into a big deal industry. And just like the digital retail of music and of videos before it, it’s about to cross a critical threshold – the billion dollar industry club. This is a very big deal for digital books and e-readers alike.

$3 billion by 2015

Forrester Research has released a note to clients saying the expect the eBooks market to top out at $966 million (£608m) in digital books sold to customers in 2010, with that number on course to swell more than three times to $3 billion (£1.89 billion) come 2015.

Context

A $966 million industry is certainly big fry, but one needs context to understand why Forrester Research expects tripled growth in less than five years. This projection is down to how few people, within the greater reading community, actually read their content digitally. According to Forrester, only 7 per cent of adults who use the web actually read eBooks currently.

The potential

But this 7 per cent is extremely lucrative since ‘they read the most books and spend the most money on books’ – in other words, these are high value customers. Of this 7 per cent, 41 per cent of their reading is already done on digital books, with the platform used for reading being split evenly between computers and e-readers. When we start talking about people who actually have dedicated eBook readers, 66 per cent of their reading is done on digital books.

eBook readers will swell in usage, too

No doubt you’ve done mental number crunching on what all this means, but James McQuivey, the Forrester Research analyst who wrote this report, spells it out: ‘We have plenty of room to grow beyond the 7 per cent that read eBooks today and, once they get the hang of it, eBook readers quickly shift a majority of their book reading to a digital form. More eBook readers reading a greater percentage of their books in digital form means our nearly $3 billion figure in 2015 will be easy to hit, even if nothing else changes in the industry.’

In short, eBook readers are going nowhere quickly, and this very conservative estimate of where this industry is going will likely be hit far sooner than we think. What’s also worth noting is that e-reader manufacturers that are not the ubiquitous Amazon Kindle will no doubt have the opportunity to make a healthy chunk of change even if they capture a comparatively small part of the market.

Have you found your own reading habits shifting from paper-based books to digital books, or do you ascribe to the good old fashion way of digging into a book?

Photo: Amazon

As the eBook market has grown, and seen the emergence of three major platforms – Amazon Kindle, iBooks, and the Barnes & Noble store – publishers have begun grumbling for a standardised platform that will, one give power back to them and, two, remove the barriers that come with proprietary formats.

A book is a book is a book

Much like books printed in one location get delivered to multiple retail outlets, publishers want eBooks to work in a similar manner. However, unlike the aforementioned books and digital music even, different eBook platform holders have different file formats, as well as different rights management, meaning migrating your digital books to different e-readers and devices would be a problem.

This is inconvenient for users who will inevitably upgrade to new (and potentially different format) devices within the foreseeable future, as well as being inconvenient for publishers who have to – at great costs – digitise each of their titles for a host of different platforms.

The solution

The solution is simple, really – force platform holders to adopt a standard format. But the only way this will happen is if the publishers work together. The problem is there’s a major hurdle in trying to get the publishers to work together, and that is their collective fear of piracy.

E-readers stand to benefit, too

Photo: Apple

Outside of the benefit for publishers, dedicated e-readers would benefit, too, from a standardized format. Not only have proprietary formats tethered specific books to specific devices, they’ve also cut stand-alone e-readers at the knees, with some analysts saying this device category has no future.

What now?

At this stage, it’s very difficult to see how publishers can deal with their dilemma. Amazon Kindle and iBooks, as well as Barnes & Noble have all the power, and unless the publishers can unite and form their own retail platform or successfully lobby for change, the industry will stay fragmented. This suits iPad sales and Kindle sales very well, but for publishers and consumers, in general? Probably not so much.

Photo: Samsung

Samsung – one of the world’s leaders in display technology – has recently decided to step into the already crowded eBook market, and have announced the first of their releases: the E6 and E101. Although the E6 is not as large as other eBook readers, measuring at 6 inches, the E101 at 10 inches is one of the largest screens available.

Scribbler

The screens of both eBook readers are made of ‘e-paper’, which increases reading visibility in direct sunlight – which should be considered standard. However, a noticeable extra is the electromagnetic resonance pen (or EMR), which enables direct writing by hand onto the display and allows the customisation of notes, the updating calendars, and more. Another nice addition is that the EMR itself is customisable, with a multitude of pen and eraser thicknesses.

Practicality

As all eBook readers should, Samsung’s E6 and E101 both support ePub, PDF and .txt formats and each have a set of onboard dictionaries. However, some nice extras such as the MP3 player and a text-to-speech engine could sway some buyers. Also, because of the e-paper display which reflects natural light, reading is instantly easier on the eyes and the battery consumption is lower than a backlit display, which can only mean longer battery life.

Connectivity

The E6 and E101 are equipped with both wireless capability (Wi-Fi 802.11b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0 (built in). So, some content can be shared with other devices. A partnership with Google means one will be able to have access to more than a million books for free. The Samsung E6 and E101 will only be released sometime in March 2010 and will cost roughly $399 (around £250) and $699 (close to £450) respectively. Whether or not Samsung will establish themselves in this market, one can only guess, but, as far as eBooks go, this is worth a look.

The Kindle eBook Reader is an amazing device that is manufactured by amazon.com. It is an e-reader which helps you to read online books without connecting any other device with it. It is one of the most famous e-book readers available in the market. It is available in a stylish white colour which makes it look sophisticated and attractive. It is very compact as well and you can easily carry and store it. The device is provided with a wide screen which offers crystal clear graphics.

The Kindle eBook Reader is actually a 3G wireless device which enables you to download books from the internet. It is supported in over 100 different countries which enhances the functionality. The device is 1/3rd of an inch in width and is very thin which makes it look pretty attractive. It is very light in weight and only measures around 10.2 ounces. The eBook reader can be set up in less than 60 seconds and there is no computer required for setting it up. The best thing is that you don’t have to pay any monthly fees or download charges. Another very helpful feature is that you can read the e-book reader even in the sunlight.

The Kindle eBook Reader is a library in itself as it can carry over 1500 books at once. The device is fitted with a spectacular rechargeable battery which offers a long battery back up and a hassle free performance. You also have an amazing text to speech feature and you can even read newspaper and magazines on it.

Tags for this article: ebook reader, eBook Readers, kindle ebook

With everything going digital and on the move, the eBook readers are also being manufactured on the same track. The latest tend which is to be seen is of Portable eBook Reader which will be an ideal travelling partner for all those who love reading books. This king of eBook reader allows you to enjoy your journey and spend some leisure time reading books electronically.

The Portable eBook Reader is being manufactured by leading brands and is widely available in markets with great variety to offer. It offers great way of relaxation combined with excitement and craze to all the eBook readers. Some of the most sought after Portable eBook Reader include the Sony PRS-505S with 6.0 inch display. Compatible with formats like TXT, RTF, PDF, DOC, MPS and JPG, this reader offers hard drive space of 20MB and internal memory of 128MB.

The Endless Ideas BeBook is another Portable eBook Reader offering a resolution of 600 x 800 pixels. This stylish reader is compatible with JPF, GIF, RAR, ZIP and MP3 formats. It also allows you to save data up to 512 MB and is actually a rather cheap eBook reader. If you are looking for more expensive models with bigger displays, then you can choose from the iRex Digital Reader 1000s featuring 10.2 inch display with an excellent resolution of 1024 x 1280 pixels and supports formats including PDF, TXT, HTML, PNG, GIF and TIF. Another great product in this range is iRex iLiad Book Edition.

You can make your choice from the wide range of Portable eBook Reader available and add more excitement and relaxation to your journey. Other choices can be Interead Cool-ER 2009, Bookeen CyBook OPUS,
Sony Reader PRS-300 and many more. The leading brands manufacturing portable readers are Sony, Interead, Bookeen, Endless Idea and iRex.