Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Audiobook and eBook Study Online Now

Library and Archives Canada has just published a study we did for them late last year on audiobook and eBook publishing in Canada. The study is online now in HTML and MP3 editions and soon to be available via accessible PDF.

As far as we know, this is the first comprehensive study of digital publishing in Canada. It explores the context for audiobook and eBook publishing, the current Canadian market, production of digital editions, and circulation of digital books in libraries.

The study’s main findings include:

Mainstream audiences are primed for digital: “Digital natives” (i.e., those who have grown up using computers and the Internet) are very at ease reading off a screen as opposed to the printed page and are ready consumers of digital content. At the other end of the demographic spectrum, Canada’s aging population means that an increasing number of consumers will prefer or require non-print formats that help them counter sight or other print-reading challenges.

Digital devices are on the rise: The mass market’s adoption of a new generation of Internet-enabled portable devices—e.g., cell phones, smart phones, and PDAs—has accelerated consumption of digital content, both online and via download. Similarly, the rapid adoption of purpose-built reading devices, especially the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle, has given eBooks real traction in consumer markets for the first time.

Digitization of book content is increasing rapidly: Thanks to increasingly digital production workflows, virtually all publishers can easily generate some level of eBook file from their native production files. As publishers accumulate a growing archive of digital production files, and as older backlist titles are scanned or otherwise converted into usable digital source files, the commercial output of digital books has naturally increased. To date, this has mainly been in the form of eBooks of various formats—especially PDF—and large multinational publishers have accounted for the majority of commercial releases.

There is relatively little Canadian content in sales channels for digital editions: The Canadian-owned publishing firms that account for the majority of Canadian-authored titles published each year have been relatively slow to publish digital editions of their books. Canadian-owned firms are small compared to their multinational competitors and generally have more limited staff and/or budget resources to invest in digitization programs.

Management of rights and copyright is a major market shaper: Many book publishers will have audio rights for their titles, but relatively few have historically acquired electronic rights. Therefore, a decision to publish electronic editions of one’s books is often accompanied by the need to revise contract language for new titles and to clear or acquire electronic rights for previously published work. The application of Digital Rights Management protections (DRM) is the other key rights issue in digital publishing. The goal of DRM is to limit piracy of copyrighted work, but these measures often also have the effect of locking content into a given sales channel. Consumer resistance to DRM restrictions on digital content, combined with publishers’ interest in breaking down platform monopolies has led to a weakening (or even abandoning) of DRM protections on an expanding range of digital titles.

You can find the complete study report on the LAC site, and please drop us a line anytime with questions or feedback.

A special thanks to the many industry experts in Canada and the US who contributed their ideas and data to the study, and also to the Initiative for Equitable Library Access team at Library and Archives Canada for their support of the project.