Editorial

Citation

Cassell, K.A. (2011), "Editorial", Collection Building, Vol. 30 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/cb.2011.17130aaa.002

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Collection Building, Volume 30, Issue 1

In October I had the opportunity to attend the annual Frankfurt Book Fair. The Book Fair, one of the largest in the world, provides publishers with the opportunity to display their publications. It is also the venue for international rights sales. The guest-of-honour country was Argentina, which displayed its many publishing houses and publications and presented a series of interesting programs. A new feature was the StoryDrive Conference, which was established to help publishers explore the ways that books, film, television, games, etc., use to get their content to the public. Many programmes and panels on all aspects of publishing were held.

At Frankfurt it was clear that print publications still predominate in the world. The USA is moving quickly into e-books, but European publishers are moving with a great deal more caution although it is definitely of great interest. A panel entitled “E-Book Business – Who’s in Control” featured representatives from the USA, the UK and Germany. The report from the USA indicated that e-books are 15 per cent of the trade business and growing. It is a healthy sign that there are many players in the US market, including Amazon/Kindle, Barnes and Noble/Nook, iPad, Sony, Kobo and more recently Google Editions, Copia and Blio. The UK representative indicated that e-books were 1 per cent of the trade business and growing slowly, but that within eight years or less 50 per cent of the sales will be digital. The German representative indicated that e-books were less than 1 per cent of the trade business and that they were trailing the USA by three years. They have developed a platform for e-books and will begin to move faster.

Only the USA is seeing a large downturn in the bookstore business, while in the UK there is a growth in fiction sales due to books like Steig Larsson, and in Germany bookstores are fairly stable.

Some basic issues remain to be solved. Collective decisions about standardisation of formats is needed. Now publishers must customise e-books for each retailer. Also, new ways of working in publishing must be developed. Will there be a separate digital editor or will digital work be part of everyone’s job in publishing? Another issue is e-book piracy, which was also discussed in more than one forum at the Fair. It is said that e-book piracy has increased 20 per cent since the introduction of the iPad.

All of us must keep watching the development of e-books. It is a fascinating area and will slowly change the way books and other content is delivered to individuals and libraries.

Kay Ann Cassell