Digital rights management has become of
increasing importance as e-book sales have continued to rise. Originally, e-book
royalty rates for the author stood at 25%. Little attention was paid to this
decision, as sales were relatively low. (Bartlett and Bradley). The politics of
selling books online needs to be re-evaluated if the author is to make the
majority of their income through this medium. Copyright issues are increasingly
linked to material shared online.
Piracy is a concern and there have been
efforts to prevent the book being copied and sent to others for free. S. Wallis
suggests however, that ‘lending’ people books and similarly borrowing books
from public libraries has also always been free and that the majority of books
have usually been circulated in this way for many years. Apple has gone some
way to addressing this issue, allowing media to be shared between up to five
computers.
Customers are increasingly in control of
the book content that they are being offered, although they are offered it in
abundance. The job of the publisher has been reduced as digital authorship
removes the distance between the author and the reader. Contribution from the
reader begins to influence the writing itself. Authors creating online books allow
focus groups to comment on their material, essentially changing the content of
the book as it is written. Craig Mod suggests that this digital impermanence
changes the book from an “isolated vessel” to a “shared interface” but
de-emphasizes the authority of distribution. In this sense, removing the
publisher can in some cases mean that quality becomes lost within the vast
digital landscape.
E-books are bringing an interactive
community to the otherwise rather solitary task of reading via the Internet. Connected
customers are given the chance to determine their own experiences with a book
through “sticky websites deployed along with social media.” (Sam Hollander) They
are able to engage with a related community and share notes and thoughts
through the e-books themselves and through forums and websites. Digital
technology also removes the sense of isolation by bringing the idea and the
reader much closer together. Technology has a short life span, and this is one
of the difficulties faced by companies attempting to innovate. To make money,
money has to be invested in new ideas but with the ever-changing digital world,
these changes need to be appropriate and easily accessible technology.
Digital has not yet changed the book, but offered a different platform from which to read it.
