EBooks. The problem.

(the second part of my double-post for this week!)

I do rather like ebooks. They are fast, they are convenient, and they make everything easier. For the person who does not like the 'inconvenience' of going to a bookshop and spending time perusing the shelves, before making their purchase, the ebook is perfect. I, of course, prefer the more personal process of buying and reading books that, frankly, ebooks do not give. But for those days when I simply do not have the time to visit a bookshop, ebooks are a great alternative.

The argument surrounding ebooks has been ongoing for a while now. Publishers are having to move fast to keep up with the growing demand for ebooks as we move into a more digital way of reading, and bookshops are struggling to compete. Evidence of bookshops closing down or struggling all over the country, and libraries being closed down also has been the legacy of the ebook and the ereader (of which there seems to be an endless number).

It seems the executive director of Bloomsbury has hit the nail on the head when he recently remarked in Frankfurt that, "you need to be able to offer both [e-books and an ereader] if you are to take any share of the market." Indeed, the credibility of his words comes to light when you take into account that W H Smith have recently announced a partnership with Kobo to launch a new device also. (This is along with the numerous versions of Kindles by Amazon, the iPad, endless tablet devices, and the Sony ereader, and more). It seems they are all getting in on this as fast as possible just to stay with the market.

The root of the problem when it comes to ebooks, and that has authors reluctant to enter themselves into the market, is the issue of piracy. This, of course, was discussed in Frankfurt (though I think the issue is far from being solved). With digitalisation inevitably comes piracy, and this has made the potential for books being pirated much easier than in the past. The solution seems obvious, something needs to be implemented to protect authors from being pirated. Sounds simple. Right? Wrong. With the internet as large as it is, it seems to be near impossible to monitor sites that would offer books illegally. How would publishers monitor them? How can they assure their authors they can protect them? It was only less than a year ago that I was watching the news and a film company had won a bid to stop a popular site from illegally streaming films. But there are so many more sites out there doing the exact same thing. So if the film industry cannot take actions to prevent this, what hope does the literary industry? One thing is for sure, the question will always remain when it comes to publishers and their authors: to ebook, or not to ebook?