e-Publishing: SMP Pushing Dual Releases
Calvin Reid -- 3/27/00
Publisher finding unexpected success with simultaneous publication of print and digital formats
 | Print or digital:
Consumer's choice. |
With more than 130 of its titles available as downloadable electronic editions, St. Martin's Press plans to release many more of its titles simultaneously in print and electronic editions.
SMP announced a list of 28 titles currently scheduled for publication throughout 2000 that will be released in paper and digital formats. And Steve Cohen, senior v-p of finance and administration at St. Martin's Press, told PW the house has 300 to 400 titles that it could conceivably release in both forms. "Eventually, every SMP title will be released simultaneously in print and in digital form," he said. And those numbers, Cohen added, don't even include Tor, SMP's science fiction imprint. "We get a lot of requests for Tor editions," he said. Currently, SMP makes the digital files of selected titles available to a variety of e-book distribution channels for conversion into all available e-book formats.
Among the 28 titles slated for simultaneous release are James Flint's information age novel Habitus (Mar.); Donald Spoto's biography Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life (Mar.); and Hot Night in the City (June), short stories by bestselling author Trevanian.
Cohen told PW that SMP and the rest of the Holtzbrinck publishing group, which includes Henry Holt and Farrar, Straus & Giroux, have convened an "e-strategy" group to examine the issues around digital publishing. Cohen is a member of the group, which, he said, "is looking at all the questions: conversion, sales, presentation, hardware and software." Cohen did emphasize that e-books need some kind of "virtual distributor," instead of having "separate contracts with a thousand different e-book vendors. There needs to be an e-book fulfillment center that we could sell to on a discount schedule and they would then forward sales data to us."
Cohen said that beginning with Monica's Story in 1998, SMP made 130 of its titles available in a variety of downloadable formats, including Rocket eBook, SoftBook and Palm Pilot editions. Rather than the traditional publishing "80/20" model (80% of sales come from 20% of the titles), Cohen said 118 of the titles reported at least some sales and the top 10 sellers represented 50% of the sales. "People were buying across the list," said Cohen. General fiction, rather than science fiction or nonfiction as might be expected, was the top-selling category. The top five e-titles sold 500 to 1,000 copies each, and the next five sold 250 copies each. "To me, this says that the market is hungry for material. These numbers are very encouraging," said Cohen. SMP's bestselling e-titles included Digital Fortress by Dan Brown and Reckless Homicide, a thriller by Ira Genberg.
"We're committed to learning more about e-book publishing," said Cohen. E-books, he said, "bring the author to a wider audience. They generate incremental business and I don't believe they steal print sales." Besides, Cohen said, "e-books are getting great media attention and that attracts even more attention to your titles."
Cryptography Is Urgent Need
At the Digital Rights Management seminar held in New York last month, Martin Eberhard, CEO of NuvoMedia, urged e-book publishers to be sure that they are taking the necessary steps to prevent the widespread illegal copying that has already caused problems in the music CD and DVD video.
As publishers begin to follow music into the brave new world of electronic distribution, Eberhard said, "publishers can learn from the music industry's expensive mistakes of taking copyright enforcement lightly." The best way for publishers to protect copyright is to combine a legal approach with effective technical safe guards, Eberhard said.
Eberhard observed that while it may be nearly impossible to prevent an expert, determined hacker from breaking through a company's security system, it is extremely important to develop systems that can prevent the "casual copier" from gaining access to a company's materials. It is the casual hacker who will cause "viral distribution" of pirated copies by giving files to his or her friends as well as using pirated copies that he or she receives from a friend. "We must make it sufficiently difficult to create copies that the casual copier will not bother," Eberhard said.
Eberhard recommended a three-pronged cryptography approach to enforce copyright protection. According to Eberhard, strong cryptography must be used. The algorithm must be strong enough to remain difficult to break for many years, he said. Secondly, Eberhard said, "Decryption must occur only in a secure environment." Eberhard described a secure environment as one that is not only a closed system where copying is prevented, but where it is impossible to load any software that could be used to create copies. Eberhard's final rule is: "Encryption must be done uniquely for each user." If the same key is used for all books, he said, then books can be passed around. "But much worse," he warned, is that "a hacker could create a 'master key' program that unlocks every single encrypted book."
Eberhard closed by reiterating that any copyright enforcement system that d s not meet all three criteria is vulnerable to widespread piracy. --Jim Milliot
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