What's the fuss about e books and electronic publishing?

E books and electronic publishing are hot topics in newspapers and magazines these days. As publishing innovators (Trafford was the first company in the world to offer on-demand publishing to authors around the world), we've been testing e books and working on electronic publishing for years. Want to know what we think about this? Read on...

Defining the terms e books and electronic publishing

There is no single definition for electronic publishing, nor for an e book. For our purposes, let's say that electronic publishing means selling a "book" or other document in digital format -- as opposed to a printed product. An e-book is that digital product. There are a handful of different dedicated electronic devices -- such as the Rocket eBook -- that are designed to be used solely for reading digital books. Other handheld devices, such as the Palm Pilot, are multi-purpose tools (games, calendar, note pad, etc.) that can be used for reading digital files. As well, common PCs can be used to read appropriately formated e books (Microsoft Reader and Adobe Acrobat are frontrunners).

Think about the market for e books and electronic publishing

The difficulty with dedicated e book devices is that there are so few in existence -- probably less than 20,000 in all. Consider that a remarkable new best seller might sell 100,000 copies to a continental audience of 400 million -- one for every 4,000 people. Out of the e book owners that translates to a dismal 5 copies sold!

The difficulty with electronic publishing to the non-dedicated devices is simply that the screen resolution is too poor for sustained reading. Reading on a home PC screen has many obvious disadvantages: lack of portability and eye strain to point out two problems. The larger problem is digital rights management -- piracy in the world of e books and electronic publishing!

Guarding your copyright with e books and electronic publishing

No company has yet developed a fool-proof scheme to protect your writings from piracy. Even with the most elaborate encoding available, it is simply too easy for hackers to copy your writings and then forward the text to thousands of people via email. If your writings are widely circulated without your name and a copyright notice attached, it could be argued in court that your writings have fallen into the "public domain" where one reasonably expects the work to be free of copyright protection.

Trafford has been monitoring and testing the encryption "solutions" from all the leading e book and electronic publishing software development companies. We know that overall sales levels (all devices, all retailers, all publishers) for e books are very weak (meaning the chances of earning significant income are quite low). Add to that situation the reality that the protection from piracy is still quite poor (meaning the risk to your copyright being damaged is high). Our verdict of the moment: wait and see. We'll keep monitoring e books and electronic publishing on our authors' behalf and be ready to jump in when the electronic publishing environment changes.

What's the alternative if you are impatient? Trafford's unique on-demand publishing service is a practical combination of conventional publishing tasks, print-on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing and retailing. These aren't e books or electronic books -- these are real printed books with a perfect binding and full colour cover. Trafford's service reduces the cost of self publishing by 90% (!) and drastically boosts efficiency. AND, when e books and electronic publishing do become a viable economic venture, that is included in our service. Sound great? After investigating the alternatives, you'll be even more impressed with how affordable, convenient and comprehensive Trafford on-demand publishing service^TM really is for self publishing authors.

--- thanks for your interest in Trafford,

Bruce Batchelor, publisher and CEO