obpo.jpgReceived this fascinating press release today. Despite all the talk about the majors, it’s when I see something like this that it brings home just how pervasive ebooks will be. The Backgrounder, after the break, is especially interesting, as it describes a typical small publisher’s problems and challenges in undertaking to do ebooks and gives a good overview of the state of ebooks in Canada.

I would note, given my comments about Epub not being a standard, the Backgrounder’s comment: It is only now that we are beginning to see the flattening out of formats to the more uniform ePub format for most digital distributors, but there still is no one standard. “Even with ePub each book has to be tweaked for each retailer,” explains Mike O’Connor of Insomniac Press.

For all these reasons I print the release, and the Backgrounder, in full:

Toronto, July 12, 2010: A group of forward-thinking publishers within the Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario (OBPO) – including academic, niche, general trade and children’s publishers – are working collectively to ensure that booksellers, libraries and readers across Canada are aware that a vast and wide-ranging selection of their books are now available as e-books.

With the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, the OBPO is launching a marketing campaign this summer with a series of national ads highlighting the strength, breadth and quantity of their e-book titles, which will soon number close to 5,000. The marketing campaign will target libraries primarily, with the goal of encouraging academic and public libraries across the country to expand their collections of Canadian-published e-books.

It’s worth noting that having successfully entered the world of digitized books is a significant accomplishment for these smaller Ontario publishers. Although many academic publishers in Ontario have been providing electronic versions (PDFs) of textbooks for a decade or more, most Canadian-owned houses in the province are still testing the waters in this ever-changing market.


In order to compete against the international players, most members of the OBPO had to learn the ins and outs of e-book publishing at a furious rate. To facilitate the process, the Canadian Publishers Digital Services (CPDS) was formed with the help of the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP). The CPDS guides Canadian publishers through the various difficulties they face in getting their e-books into the marketplace (please see Backgrounder for more).

Despite many hurdles, most Ontario book publishers can rightfully boast that they are now successfully digitizing their content and some have even standardized e-books into their production schedules: Over 80 per cent now regularly publish their frontlist in e-book formats and 35 per cent have most of their backlist available as e-books. Collectively, these Ontario publishers release about 500 new books a year – that’s a great deal of Canadian econtent potentially available to booksellers and libraries across the country.

OBPO E-BOOK CAMPAIGN BACKGROUNDER

The Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario (OBPO) represents over 40 publishing companies based in Ontario. Its role is to represent the interests of those publishers in a variety of ways, to foster educational opportunities and to find ways to market its members’ books and programs cost-effectively. www.obpo.ca

Canadian Publishers Digital Services (CPDS) Launched in March 2009, CPDS is a suite of programs that leverage the power of the collective to (a) buy digital services, such as file conversion and repository services, at advantageous rates; (b) sell or license digital content at terms available only to large vendors; and (c) share current research and information on technology developments and market opportunities for e-publishing. CPDS is the single most important vehicle through which Canadian books can be effectively made available to readers in digital format and through which publishers can receive the information most valuable for their specific purposes out of the vast body of material produced every day on digital matters

Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) is a partnership of Canadian universities, dedicated to expanding digital content for the academic research enterprise in Canada. Through the coordinated leadership of librarians, researchers, and administrators, CRKN undertakes large-scale content acquisition and licensing initiatives in order to build knowledge infrastructure and research capacity in Canada’s universities. Gibson Library Connections brokered an arrangement between CRKN and the OBPO publishers to distribute their e-books into academic libraries. www.researchknowledge.ca

Timeline of e-book Adoption by Publishing Genre:

1. Academic/Scholarly – began supplementing textbooks with online content, then offered scholarly journals and textbooks electronically.

2. Computer and Tech books – an early adopter category

3. Adult Trade/Reference – the next wave as reference books are well-suited to electronic formats

4. Adult Fiction and Non-fiction

5. YA Fiction

6. Children’s Picture Books– are particularly challenging because the illustrations and colour don’t translate in ePub. The iPad format allows for full-colour illustration.

Challenges for OBPO publishers:

NO FULLY STANDARDIZED E-BOOK FORMAT:

In two short years the e-book market has grown dramatically with the success of reading devices: the Sony Reader was available in Canada in 2008, Amazon’s Kindle in 2009, Indigo’s Kobo was launched at the end of May and last month Apple’s iPad was available at Canadian retailers. Sony, Amazon, Kobo and iBooks each have their own distribution channels, or online stores. Historically, distributors required content in their proprietary format – a significant hurdle for small publishers who simply don’t have the staff to convert books to the various formats. It is only now that we are beginning to see the flattening out of formats to the more uniform ePub format for most digital distributors, but there still is no one standard. “Even with ePub each book has to be tweaked for each retailer,” explains Mike O’Connor of Insomniac Press.

Besides the familiar e-book retailers, such as Sony, Amazon, Kobo, and iBookstore there are many others that publishers deal with, some retail, some wholesale, others library only, including:

B & N

Blio

Ebrary

Ebsco

Follet

Ibis

LibreDigital (iBooks)

MobiPocket (Amazon)

Myilibrary

NetLibrary

Overdrive

WOWIO

MERCHANDISING & METADATA

Smaller publishers also face challenges in marketing their e-books effectively. “Discoverability is key to selling e-books,” explains ECW’s David Caron. Traditionally Ontario publishers could rely on indie booksellers to hand-sell local authors’ books or display new books face-out, on tabletops or in windows as part of their promotion. In the e-book universe, “metadata” or expanded bibliographic information – everything from book synopses, categories, excerpts, author information – improves discoverability and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which brings readers to books through various links (the online version of the hand-sell). Providing effective metadata requires dedication from the publisher and can be difficult for smaller presses, but is imperative to successfully marketing e-books.

SALES DATA:

Many publishers – large and small – feel as though they are publishing e-books into a vacuum. There is a general lack of knowledge on Canadian e-book reading habits since none of the major distributors release sales data to BookNet Canada or the media.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND CANADIAN-AUTHORED E-BOOKS

There is a surprisingly small number of Canadian-authored e-books available in public libraries in Canada. The OBPO hopes to convince public libraries to expand its Canadian e-book collection to include titles from their broad selection.

GRANT MONEY AND E-BOOKS:

Federal and provincial grant money is imperative to the survival of many publishers in Ontario, and the support of the OMDC, the Canada Council for the Arts and other arts lending organizations have aided Ontario publishers in entering the e-book market.

A FINAL NOTE: THE PERILOUS TRADE

Roy MacSkimming called his 2003 book on Canadian publishing The Perilous Trade, and although published before the proliferation of e-publishing, nothing could better describe the industry’s challenges today. MacSkimming recalled the book trade in the 1970s, as being “one damn thing after another.” Some things, it seems, never change.

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