Book trade can learn from music labels’ mistakes

In Frankfurt, at the world’s biggest book fair, the mood is muted this year, with visitor and exhibitor numbers slightly down and many events — including the Random House party that was the show’s social highlight — cancelled.

But electronic book distribution does present opportunities —such as allowing for reader feedback, selling advertising alongside texts, extras like author interviews, or releasing chapters of books, serial-style — that print books do not.

Even piracy, probably the industry’s greatest fear as it gingerly moves online, may not be the threat it is made out to be, a study by Magellan Media consultancy presented at the book fair shows.

The study followed sales of 66 titles from publisher O’Reilly — whose bestsellers include iPhone, The Missing Manual and The Twitter Book — to monitor the effects of piracy on sales of physical and digital versions of those titles over a year.

Legal sales

It found that legal sales of the 21 titles that were pirated peaked after the piracy began — suggesting that for certain niches of the market may actually benefit from piracy as a kind of free marketing.

Magellan concedes the sample size is too small for firm conclusions, and is seeking partners for a much bigger experiment.

“If it’s helping you, or not hurting you, spending money on enforcement is an unnecessary cost,” Brian O’Leary, a principal consultant at Magellan, told Reuters.

He added he considered comparisons with the music industry to be false. “There’s a world of difference between a 15-hour commitment to reading a book and a 30-second song clip.”
In the end, the consumer may not care.

The music industry in its day stoked fears that piracy would destroy the quality of recorded music: If the music labels did not earn enough revenue, they would not be able to nurture the talent enjoyed by so many, the argument ran.

Ten years on, music is enjoyed by many more people more cheaply than before, without a noticeable deterioration in quality — despite threats by artistes including British pop singer Lily Allen to quit because it is too hard to make money.