Professional books and piracy
Jinfo Blog

By Nancy Davis Kho

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This month Simba Information released an updated Global Professional Publishing 2009-2010 report which points to eBook strategies as one of the ways that professional publishers are clawing their way back to 2008 profitability levels. (One wonders if using 2008 as a benchmark represents a lack of ambition, considering the economic recession was already underway by then, but at least directionally it's a positive sign.) 

The report, available for purchase here, found that the market for professional books grew 1.1% to $13.91 billion in 2010. The study cites the enthusiasm with which publishers are approaching the eBook market, together with the role that search engine companies like Google and Yahoo! play in assisting with content discovery, as major drivers of the slow but unmistakable recovery of professional publishing. Surely the rapid adoption of fully featured tablet computers that I mentioned in a LiveWire post earlier this month is helping by making reading on the go more appealing.  

But a week later an article in Simba's professional content report highlighted a risk of that eBook-fuelled recovery: piracy. Professional Book Piracy Thriving in Cyberspace compares publishing to the music industry, where efforts to end piracy have been well documented (and oft frustrated). The Simba report suggests that in the $13.91 billion market for professional books, "as much as $1.7 million in potential revenue is lost per title in the technical segment and about $1 million per title in the science segment."

Count on publishers to continue to grapple with ways to make their book content available electronically to professional end users without opening the doors for piracy. One such approach in the consumer world was highlighted in a 18 Feb article in the Toronto Globe and Mail, "The rise of the e-book lending library (and the death of e-book pirating)." The story looks at services like the Kindle Lending Club and eBookFling, which enables strangers to share books under terms set by the publisher.

While these models may not yet be in final form, it's heartening to see publishers taking an active, exploratory role in how eBooks are shared between consumers, rather than the punitive, reactive approach taken by many music publishers. Ultimately that may spell the difference between working together with customers or against them.

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