At The Heart of eBooks

An interview with eBooks.com founder Stephen Cole

eBooks.com founder Stephen Cole took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to give Planet eBook his thoughts on ebooks and where the industry is heading.


Planet eBook: Your background in ebooks extends back about four years, back to a time when ebooks were barely known. It was probably hard to get past explaining what an 'ebook' was let alone have people understand there was a market and industry that would evolve quickly. How did the publishing industry take to the concept of ebooks in 1996-1997?

Stephen Cole: I started the project on 1 January 1997. Shortly after, I joined a small but very vigorous online discussion list called the ebook-list. There were only about fifty people on the list at the time and they were probably the only fifty people in the world at the time who knew what the word "ebook" meant. Yes there was a tremendous gulf in comprehension in the wider world at the time.

As a bookseller and internet fanatic, it just made obvious sense to me that this was the inevitable future of book distribution. But it has taken a long time for that notion to gain acceptance.

The first person in the book industry to really "get" the idea was Oliver Freeman, who joined the company in 1998.

PE: When do you think the industry turned, turned to the point that publishers, authors and readers knew what ebooks were and that there was a future for them?

SC: There were two pivotal moments. The first was in November 1998 (I think) when Nuvomedia launched its Rocket eBook. They did a brilliant job of capturing the imagination of the press and public. You can talk until the cows come home about digital books, downloadable files, revenue models, blah blah, but ... just put one of those elegant gadgets into someone's hands and in a moment they get it.

The second watershed would have to be Stephen King's "Riding the Bullet". That was the single most important heads-up for the global book industry. I'm bemused by King's provocative stance towards Big Publishing, an industry to whom he and his readers owe so much. Nevertheless, it could be said that his initiative has catapulted Big Publishing into a new world of undreamed-of revenues.

PE: Currently no single ebook format seems to have all the attributes required for it to become *the* standard. For the short to mid-term it seems likely that (at least) the bigger publishers will cover the most popular formats available.

SC: Yes. If the book is a tool, then you want it on your desktop with the rest of your tools. So reference, professional, educational and technical titles are perfectly suited to PDF. PDF retains the integrity of the underlying text, and it's very functional for reference or study.

But if the book isn't a tool, if it's a leisure product, then the last place you want it is on your desktop. (Unless, of course, you're in a lousy job and you need an escape hatch.) If it's continuous text -- fiction, biography, etc -- it's hard to imagine a better interface than MS Reader.

Then again, there are 20 million palm users out there. These people are mad as rabbits about that device. They're like Mac users. You can't reason with them. Given the chance, they'll do ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING on their Palm. So why not give them books to read.

PE: Do you have an opinion on what may eventuate down the track?

SC: Yes, two things. There will be a single emergent hybrid that features the functionality and graphics capabilities of PDF with the simplicity of the MS Reader interface. For this to happen, design continuity between the published work and the ebook will have to be somewhat uncoupled, but that's no big deal.

The second thing will be the end of transaction-based DRM fee structures. DRM vendors large and small see something elegant and gorgeous in a world where they get a dollar or more for every book sold. They want to take up a franchise whereby book lovers are so stuck on their particular interface that they won't mind paying a bit extra. They're dreaming.

Book buyers love books or they need books, or both. By that I mean they want the written work, not the format. The DRM provider that releases a one-payment software license model for vendors will wipe the floor with the other players.

PE: The debate between users of dedicated ebook reading devices and multi-purposes like Palms and Pocket PCs is an interesting one. The Rocket and SoftBook users are small but enthusiastic bunch using a dedicated reader the size of a typical book, while there are literally millions using handheld devices with much smaller screens. Any thoughts on where dedicated devices may end up, and what a typical device that handles ebook may be like in a couple of years?

SC: For electronics companies, the temptation to add functions is irresistible, and consumers expect it too. Dedicated devices are going to have a hard time competing with the rapidly-developing palms unless they give in to temptation and let the Rocket double as a waffle iron, or whatever the consumer wants.

Let's face it, the thing about the dedicated devices is their size. It's no mystery -- people like reading pages that are about the size of a book. No matter how functional a palm device gets, it's just tedious having to click every 10 seconds to scroll down. That's the killer advantage of a dedicated device. To that core differentiator, manufacturers will have to add much greater storage, longer battery life, better resolution and lower prices than a palm. If they do that then they'll prosper.

PE: What do you see as the key issues that need to be resolved for authors and publishers to embrace digital content distribution?

SC: For publishers this simply represents an additional channel to market. It's like putting your books into Burger King or gas stations. It's radical, yes. You'll have to deploy some internal resources. But give it a try because it's very promising.

Publishers are real-world businesspeople who have to struggle with tight budgets and unreasonable shareholder expectations. It's hard for them to commit the necessary resources to something they see as experimental, with an utterly unknown short term outcome. It is our challenge as ebooksellers to make the transition as safe and comprehensible as possible.

The biggest worry publishers have is about copyright security. This is a reasonable concern and in no way trivial. They have all been around long enough to know what to make of the sanguine reassurances of IT specialists. They look on in horror at what's happening to the recorded music market. What they know is that, if the genie stays in the bottle, they're safe. It's our role as evangelists to take publishers' security concerns seriously and offer solutions they feel confident about.

In my experience, authors are very excited about the possibilities of digital distribution. They are not overly worried about security, and often say that if a few million copies of their book got out there, it would be great publicity.

Many unpublished authors see the advent of epublishing as their salvation. They are puzzled and angry when we don't accept their work. The fact is that the roles of publishers and booksellers remain very much what they have always been. Publishers identify talent, edit and design the book and market the book. Booksellers aggregate published content and provide the medium for transaction and delivery. Booksellers have never just added titles to their inventory that have not been authenticated and endorsed by a trusted publisher.

PE: What do you see as the key issues that need to be resolved for readers to embrace en masse the ebook experience?

SC: Pricing is the key issue. Over time, ebooks will bring about a revolution in the ways that people use and regard books. Prices will be driven down to reflect the real costs of digital production and distribution. Some books will be distributed free, paid for by internal advertising revenue. People will buy and discard books in vast numbers so that revenues will spiral upward. The main driver of these changes will be pricing, but quite when that will happen is anybody's guess.

PE: Your company eBooks.com has pioneered a couple of new distribution methods recently. One called ePacks, for distributing an anthology of content, and the other, eCopies, which lets the reader purchase only the specific pages they want. Do you see these kinds of 'custom publishing' technologies becoming integral in the future of ebooks?

SC: Yes. In fact, that's the way paper books are being used in libraries and organizations already. Only currently people use an interesting 20th century technology called photocopying.

PE: Are there any other technologies you think might come to the ebooks world soon?

SC: Yes. The static words-on-a-page text book is over. Once again, the timing is very unclear, but it's over for the reference book as we know it. There are tremendous opportunities for multimedia informational objects once the bandwidth thing is sorted out. I don't mean those fatuous interactive learning experiences cobbled together by designers and engineers, whose sole reason for being is that it could be done. I mean that, if you tell someone how to set a broken leg, you should show them too.

I mentioned the uncoupling of printed books from ebooks, and I think that is an inevitable next step.

More Info

  • eBooks.com Launched
  • http://www.ebooks.com/
    About Stephen Cole
    Stephen Cole is a self-confessed 'lifetime bibliophile' with a background book selling and publishing. Stephen is Managing Director of eBooks.com.
    About eBooks.com
    eBooks.com was founded in January 1997 by Stephen Cole. eBooks.com aims to be the pre-eminent eBookstore on the Internet, selling whole books, chapters and pages of books online from the world's leading publishers.

    http://www.ebooks.com