P and E books to come out simultaneously from Pan Macmillan—plus a PM exec’s cluefulness on DRM
Who’s next? Penguin U.K. has already committed to releasing e-books with p-books in most cases, as of September. Now Pan Macmillan, a large British publisher within the Holtzbrinck conglomerate, is aiming for simultaneous publication as a routine starting in January 2009. How about it, U.S. publishers? Speak up and show your support for E. If memory serves, Hachette USA is already doing the simultaneous act. But how about the rest of you? Hasn’t the U.S. already fallen behind in enough other areas? Can’t American publishers—including foreign-owned subsidiaries—do justice to e-books?
Meanwhile the U.K.-based Bookseller, source of the above information on Pan Macmillan, quotes Sara Lloyd, PM’s head of digital publishing, as saying that DRMless e-books could help sales. “I want us to lead the way in the promotion of non-DRM e-books,” Ms. Lloyd says. I just hope that she can extend the statement—which, she emphasizes, reflects just her personal beliefs—to mean that Pan Macmillan will drop traditional DRM entirely. How about social DRM and digital watermarking instead? And along the way, a solid commitment to all books being available to consumers in ePub? An ePub logo for nonDRMed books, guaranteeing that they could be read by software with a similar image, would also help. What do you say, Ms. Lloyd?
In another statement, which should please Cory Doctorow, a big advocate of the free-E/paid-P model, she is quoted: “It depends on the book but some studies have shown that giving away an e-book entirely for free has not cannibalised print sales, and has even improved sales in some cases.”
Related: Sara Lloyd’s blog, The Baby Juggler: Three kids, two jobs, one life, as well as a recent post of hers in Pan Macmillan’s blog The Digitalist—Do authors deserve ‘a better deal’ from digital publishing? Actually The Baby Juggler’s theme fits in here. The time wasted by DRM, especially the Adobe variety, infuriates readers in general—but I’d imagine that it would especially annoy hyperbusy working mothers.
Image: Promo shot for Ms. Lloyd’s appearance at the London Book Fair.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:50 am
[...] мейджор книгоиздания PanMacmillan тоже собрался (со следующего января) выпускать ebooks одновременно с pbooks (сорри, нахватался жаргона; это paper books, бумажные книги), причем, возможно, без DRM: P and E books to come out simultaneously from Pan Macmillan—plus a PM exec’s cluefulness on DRM … [...]
April 17th, 2008 at 10:53 am
[...] There was a strong focus on digitisation at this year’s London Book Fair, with a full programme of seminars on the subject, and a general buzz around how to go about digitising your content. Sara also revealed, during the seminar entitled “Commercial Angles to Digitisation: Do They Exist in the Book World?”, that Pan Macmillan will publish new print and e-books simultaneously from January 2009. Other big publishers making similar moves are Penguin and Bloomsbury. Read a US perspective on this UK-based news here. [...]
April 20th, 2008 at 6:35 am
[...] Macmillian joins the simultaneous release of e-books and paper books. DRM free as [...]