Saturday, March 5, 2011

Digital publishing in Italy: prices and too many dealers out of business

"Is it possible that the latest book by Umberto Eco in the electronic version costs slightly less than paper? And then actually has a price even higher, because at least 10% off any bookseller me would you? This is the "stomach ache" of publishers who think that way to stop this phenomenon eBook. Without realizing that in doing so do nothing but fuel the piracy.

"And 'this is the first question put into the pot by Antonio Tombolini, creator of Simplicissimus, and STEALTH ®, an eBook distribution platform, and organizer of the first edition of Ebook Lab Italy, a three-day event dedicated entirely to publishing digital Italy, which closes today in Rimini.

Just this week the European Union has deployed its inspectors in various publishing houses to see if there are illegal agreements to fix prices of electronic books. "The Commission has reason to believe that the companies involved may have violated European antitrust rules prohibiting cartels and other restrictive practices in economic activity," it said in a statement.

At the moment everything is still to be verified, but doubts are born precisely of the Authority's general confusion that dominates an industry in constant evolution. In Italy the sector also has its specific problems. According to Gino Roncaglia (author of The Fourth Revolution - Six lessons about the future of the book, Laterza) the situation over here is very complex, the market is tiny compared to an amount already too large in proportion to distributors and brokers: I have the impression someone gets hurt.

E 'need to do now a distinction between categories, "says Roncaglia," there are the works' right out', which are scanned through various projects, such as Google Books, the works' orphan ', which is not certain that there is no right - probably dating from the early classics of the twentieth century - and, finally, those scanned for commercial purposes.

" As regards the works right out of an agreement was signed between the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Google in 2010 that provides for the digitization of library collections of the National Libraries of Rome and Florence but at the moment is playing only the discovery phase of the texts to be digitized.

For orphan works Roncaglia speaks of "black hole" if the United States is always Google to have concluded an agreement with authors and publishers to create a fund from which to draw in the case of recourse rights, an initiative that Germany and France have turned their noses up in Italy does not move anything.

the IEA, the Association of Italian publishers, provides us with the numbers of e-books for sale: "In early 2010 titles available was 1600," says Cristina Mussinelli, "while at the end of November we had already risen to 5,900. Centotrentuno publishers in the field, with 37 major brands associated with an average of 149 titles to his head.

" The small independent publishers are 94 with an average of 16 titles each, mostly adult fiction, with an average price of 7.90 € to eBook. According to the IEA Office of Studies and then, the market share that digital is hoarding would be only 0.1%.

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