There are many reasons to be bullish for ebooks. On the device side, the iPad set the standard (rather high) and triggered an intense competition among manufacturers and operating systems providers. On the people side, just take New York’s subway, or a high-speed train in Europe. And we’ve seen nothing yet: tablets prices will go down as cell phone carriers – and eventually media companies – subsidize e-readers. Before year-end, European telcos will offer the Samsung Galaxy — an Android-powered tablet — for €300 or less, preloaded with access to online bookstores and electronic newsstands. For the industry, this Christmas season is critical: tablet makers must secure defensible market territory before Apple’s probable roll-out of its next generation iPad.
The content side remains more complicated to figure out. A first phase is likely to consist of an extension of what we have today, i.e. a transaction system based of book files: text-based books or richer media products. The main players will remain Amazon, or the Apple iBooks store. But, in five to ten years, this way of dealing with intellectual content will be seen as primitive.
The true revolution will be a shift from a files transaction system to a rights transaction system. This transformation involves radical changes in the way we think of digital content, books, videos or even games.
For now, let’s focus on books. Here is how it could work.
We’re now in 2015. I read books-related contents on a number of different devices: my smartphone, my high definition tablet, and even my PC some times. (I personally do not believe in TV for such products). I want spend a long weekend in Rome. Instead of buying a couple of books – one to organize my trip and another to use on location – I will buy rights to both.
As I download the books I bought rights to on an iPad or a Samsung Galaxy, the content takes advantage of specific screen features and displays large pictures, some of in 360° panoramic format and zoomable. My Microsoft tablet uses the extraordinary DeepZoom technology connected to the Bing Maps Live View…
In Rome two weeks later, on my smartphone, the same book morphs into a handy city guide: maps, museum locations, places to stay or eat. The contents use my phone’s geolocation capabilities, helping me find my way and manage my itinerary.
None of the files associated with the guide ever appear as such on the device. The contents are transparently stored on a caching system intelligent enough to adapt to my reading conditions of the moment: type and capability of the device, processing speed, network configuration: full broadband at home, 3G — or 2015’s 5G — in Rome.
For as long as I own the rights to my book (I can buy rights “for ever”, or for a limited time), and since the files are stored in the cloud, I get the most recent version. If I go back to Rome in spring, the list of restaurants and museum programs will be updated.
Alternatively, if I’m fond of art history, my first purchase preparing for my Roman trip could take place in a regular bookstore. Attached to this €49.99 coffee-table book will be the rights to use/download the adaptive travel guide. In fact, I’ll do the transaction through my beloved local bookstore. This “with-it” establishment also offers a virtual store on Google Editions (launched in 2011), which provides storage for the contents files, processes the transaction and manages the caching process for my devices. Thousands of bookstores across the world uses Google Editions.
My digital rights are also transferable: I can loan or give the book by simply transferring the rights attached to the digital files. In retrospect, this feature makes 2010 digital bookstores look primitive. For instance, in the Apple iBooks Store, I was forbidden to offer a book to anyone or even to access to a iBooks in a foreign country – thus negating key advantages of dematerialized contents.
Buying a right of use instead of an actual file will profoundly change the landscape and the role of the different players.
Back to the present, here are few things to consider.
- The importance of identifying the user. Dealing with rights means, first and foremost, being able to certify the ID of the person who paid for it. In this field, telcos are well-placed, especially mobile carriers. They own the customer relationship, the contract, the billing arrangements. In addition, carriers know how to track the digital subscriber in order to adjust connectivity to the device currently used and to the location of the moment.
Put another way, a mobile carrier can assume the role of a trusted digital locker and thus become accountable for the management of piracy problems. Today, piracy involves the illegal use or transfer of a file. Tomorrow, the problem will be displaced to certifying the ID of rights holders.
Another key success factor for the move from files to rights will be the carriers’ ability to work together, to interconnect their platforms and services. ‘We vastly underestimated the importance of the network effect’, said to me one executive of a major European carrier. ‘Since we “owned“ our customer, we were confident they would be happy and faithful. They taught us a completely different lesson.’
- Mastering the cloud. In this field, Google is the dominant gatekeeper. By a large margin. Thanks to its huge infrastructure, the search giant is able to guarantee the scalability, the speed, and the safety of data. It will also be able to offer a reliable and inexpensive transaction system.
- Google and mobile phone carriers are likely to become entangled in a fierce and strange competition on the following grounds:
- Google owns the cloud to store and secure data (Microsoft also has significant capabilities).
- Mobile carriers own the customer base. By the millions: 564m for China Mobile; 430m for Vodafone; 278m for Telefonica/Movistar; 215m for America Movil, etc. (see full list here).
- They know how to make their customer pay.
- But they don’t have search engines. Google does, and to some extent, Microsoft does as well.
- To further complicate matters, Google and the carriers are intertwined through the Android operating system, which is powering an increasing number of handsets (Microsoft largely missed that train).
This petri dish will be quite interesting to observe as colonies of bacteria and fungi fight for space and secrete toxins to kill competing species.
Coming back to the subject of this column, the shift from paid-for files to rights for books or digital contents won’t come easily. As a telco exec told me last week: ‘It took centuries to convince people their money was more secure in a bank than under a mattress; convincing them they should trade ownership for access rights will take some time’. But this is the logical way to go.
—frederic.filloux@mondaynote.com
Related columns:
- Ebooks Winners & Losers TweetLet’s come back to the ebook with more questions. There is no doubt: the digital book will find its place under the sun; its prospects look much better than those of the online press. In the first place, there isn’t an ingrained, now decade-old, habit of reading news for free on the internet. Second, the [...]...
- Ebooks and Apps, same challenges Tweet(Second of a series) Last week, we looked at the ebook’s Giant Disruption. A new ecosystem in which Amazon eats publishers’ and agents’ lunch by luring authors into self-publishing. Today, we examine the new regime’s impact on book-making and distribution processes. The outcome will surprise few readers: Over time, the new book publishing business will [...]...
- Ebooks: Defending the Agency Model Tweet(Last of a series — for a while.) Launching an antitrust probe against books publishers, as the US Department of Justice might do, can’t come at a weirdest time. In the two previous Monday Notes, we explained how Amazon is maneuvering itself into a position to dominate the entire book industry. The Seattle giant keeps [...]...
- eBooks and Smartphones TweetUpdate: see a presentation of the Kindle2 here. Another look at an old, but not aging, topic: eBooks. There is visible agitation ahead of Amazon’s expected announcement, probably as you read this note Monday February 9th. Jeff Bezos is set to announce a new version of the Kindle eBook reader, let’s call it Kindle 2.0. [...]...
- Ebooks: The Giant Disruption Tweet(Part of a series) In the last twelve months, I’ve never bought fewer printed books — and I’ve never read so many books. I have switched to ebooks. My personal library is with me at all times, in my iPad and my iPhone (and in the cloud), allowing me to switch reading devices as conditions [...]...
11 Comments
Ah, love this kind of thinking because it at least gives some power to the consumer while also enabling the publishing industry to keep the relevance they are fighting to keep. What you write here extends on a post I did about the future of publishing in the religious texts genre. There, it could work. At least initially, many non-reference books will not fit this model too easily. There needs to be more learning on the side of users on how to manage their digital IDs. But, then, after the Google/Microsofts of the world pass those lessons on, this indeed would be the kind of future we could live in.
I could see colleges doing this now. They have the data and network to pull this off without too much of a behaviorial change to anyone in the loop.
Very interesting piece. One area where ownership has already been replaced by access rights is in the supply of electronic journals to academic libraries. A lesson from there is that the suppliers (publishers, subscription agents and third party platforms hosting content) have often underestimated the technical and authentication difficulties that can arise on a day to day basis, disrupting and sometimes depriving customers of their legitimate access. There will be a steep learning curve for publishers as well as consumers but some players, such as Amazon, have already shown their superiority in customer service. It will be interesting to see how Google manages these challenges when Google Editions comes along.
Damn right! What carriers are afraid of is their own side-lining. The consumer is gradually seeing them as an invisible data-pipe instead of a physical product.
So right! And a very important trend, this will transform the media business as we know it. And reduce the need for ever bigger hard drives. Today’s clumsy online media products are inferior to the physical versions in too many ways: I can’t use them on any type of device, I can’t loan or sell them, they are not updated online etc.
You very elegantly describe how trading digital rights could enable several great advantages of digital media instead.
Of course this is they way we want to go!
I wrote about this in 2008, “Steve Jobs is Wrong!” about online sales of music, the same possibilities now soon aplies to all forms of media: http://alfabravo.com/2008/05/18/steve-jobs-is-wrong/
I’ve been pondering the same issue for a while; great idea! It’s already implemented on a small scale — some tech-savvy publishers such as The Pragmatic Bookshelf and O’Reilly already let you regenerate different digital formats of the books you’ve purchased (PDF, ePub, Mobi/Kindle). They tend to be rather crudely bimodal though — you have to commit in advance to digital only or digital+print, but can’t upgrade from the former to the latter.
I see a separation between license/rights grant and content formatting fee: when one already has a right-of-use to, say, a movie purchased in DVD form, ordering the Blu-ray format should only cost the media fee. Likewise, if one has the usage rights to an item, one should be able to borrow the physical artifact that someone else purchased.
Frédéric,
Great article and I agree with you that Rights Management is the next “big thing” here in supporting new models of content distribution. I do take issue with your assertion that the carriers are well suited to certify identities. In the USA at least, we change carriers rather frequently. When I am at home, my internet access is provided through Verizon (which we switched from Comcast this year). When I am away, I access the net through my iPhone and AT&T. Which would I trust with my identity? Frankly neither.
People will place their IDs with a party they trust. Someone with global reach, in case they move to another part of the country or across the globe. It may turn out to be Google. It could even be Apple. It could be eBay/PayPal. It could be Facebook (god forbid). How about Verisign? It could be someone who has yet to arrive on the scene who earns our trust.
The rights view is much better and flexible. Love your clear thinking. As a consumer I want this now.
If digital publishers want to convince people to adopt the rights model then they’re probably using the wrong metaphor. The “book” in e-book is an obvious lie, as buying an e-book is nowhere near buying a book. Setting up subscription-based “e-libraries” would mimic real-world libraries, where people are already used to paying annual subscriptions in exchange for the right to read books — not to own them. E-libraries would be reassuring. Nobody has ever complained that they must return borrowed books.
Which would I trust with my identity? Frankly neither.
People will place their IDs with a party they trust. Someone with global reach, in case they move to another part of the country or across the globe. It may turn out to be Google. It could even be Apple. It could be eBay/PayPal. It could be Facebook (god forbid). How about Verisign? It could be someone who has yet to arrive on the scene who earns our trust.
Thanks for the marvelous posting! I genuinely enjoyed
reading it, you can be a great author. I will ensure
that I bookmark your blog and will eventually come back
from now on. I want to encourage continue your great
job, have a nice holiday weekend!
dsquared2 jeans shoes are considered to be the most used style to follow by modern day people, inside a busy city, two comfortable and stylish Dsquared 2 guys sneakers so that you can in the relaxed and content planet。Dsquared two females sneakers that has a comfortable design notion head into the peoples vision, after that, the pace of the world slowly became relaxed.
9 Trackbacks
[...] Hele innlegget til Frédéric Filloux finner du her. [...]
[...] ebooks: trading digital rights, not files | Monday Note. window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({appId: "113903931986893", status: true, cookie: true, [...]
[...] been pondering the issue for a while, but have yet to put it in writing, until Frédéric Filloux wrote about it on Monday Note: We’re now in 2015. I read books-related contents on a number of different [...]
[...] Filloux in his Monday Note column describes a rights-based (as opposed to files-based) future for managing digital content (whether magazines or books): A first phase is likely to consist of an extension of what we have [...]
[...] Using this backdrop, let’s now try to see how the different participants might fare. (For a close-ip on the digital rights issue, see last week’s Monday Note) [...]
[...] Filloux expresses this difference and its benefits elegantly in the blog Monday Notes: “Buying a right of use instead of an actual file will profoundly change the landscape and [...]
[...] Note recently posted an article in a similar scope to MMM’s and came to a similar conclusion: “Coming back to the subject of this column, the shift from paid-for files to rights for [...]
[...] ebooks: trading digital rights, not files (by Frédéric Filloux): The true revolution will be a shift from a files transaction system to a [...]
[...] ebooks: trading digital rights, not files (by Frédéric Filloux): The true revolution will be a shift from a files transaction system to a [...]