Shop till you drop (the mouse) - OzAuthors and the digital advantage

OZeCulture: Shop till you drop (the mouse) …

OzAuthors and the digital advantage
… securing a place in the knowledge economy …

With daily declarations from the media and government on the burgeoning 'knowledge economy', many Australian cultural and arts organisations are asking how they can be a part of, and benefit from, this new system of wealth and distribution. OzAuthors is one such organisation which asked the question, sought a solution, and is now venturing down the path to securing a place in the new 'knowledge economy'.

OzAuthors is a next generation publishing venture between IPR Systems and the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) based on the digitisation, digital distribution and digital rights management of textual works. All of this is made possible through the underlying infrastructure - Digital Book eXchange (DBX) created by IPR Systems. By utilising DBX authors can publish, promote, sell and distribute their works online.

Although this paper refers specifically to books and text-based intellectual property, the concepts, models and functionality outlined are applicable to any form of cultural product whether it be an artwork, musical work or an audiovisual work. So as creators, I am relying on your creativity in the interpretation of this paper!

To set the scene, the OzAuthors trial project began in June 2000 and resulted in a successful pilot website <www.ozauthors.com.au> at the start of 2001. As the name suggests, OzAuthors is an online bookstore, but unlike other online bookstores, it trades in digital texts not printed books. It also allows publishers or authors to personally submit and publish a work then sell it directly to the consumer thus creating a new marketplace for texts.

The need for a service such as OzAuthors has only been viable since digitisation and the internet arrived and the combination opened up opportunities for new services and products. Books are no exception.

The e-volution of text means that bibliophiles can now satisfy themselves with ebooks (electronic books in the form of Adobe PDF files), dbooks (digital books made to order at your local digital printery) as well as the pbook (your good old fashioned printed book, hard back or paper back).

Not only are there an increasing number of formats available, but the access and usage options are expanding too. It is now possible that … a single chapter of a legal textbook can be read online, for free, within a university library network … while the full work can be purchased and downloaded for reading on a PDA or printing out on a home computer … or extracts from a Shakespearean play can be purchased at a discounted rate by an educational institution for inclusion in an eLearning package … which they can in turn, make available for sale or re-use in a similar way to the original source files.

Then there is the other side of the shopping equation. Who is to receive revenue from the sale of an ebook? Should they also receive revenue from the sale of a dbook or eLearning extract? Are there any other contributors, other than the author, to the work? How much of the total sales revenue should they receive? How much should they be taxed? And into what account should the money be deposited? Enter another batch of complexities into 'trading content online' equation.

DBX can cater for these complexities by capturing the necessary data during the initial registration and submission processes, but at the heart of OzAuthors and DBX, is the rights management system. Given that we are no longer dealing with simple, traditional copyright scenarios where the print publisher can offer an author a 10% royalty, we must now cater for both print (analog) rights-holders and digital rights-holders, which may not necessarily include the publishers and could involve completely different parties.

This is where DBX improves on traditional copyright management systems and differentiates itself from Media Asset Management and Copyright Enforcement systems. Rather, DBX allows for the allocation, management and tracking of unlimited rights holders and the slicing of revenue between these rights holders - functionality which may assist in the resolution of a number of the current analogue vs digital right cases, such as Rosetta Books vs Random House.

So although digitisation brings about a number of complexities it also provides creators and publishers with a number of 'digital advantages'.

Security and protection of copyright are the biggest issues surrounding digitisation. In order to protect a work, OzAuthors offers standard or enhanced security options utilising third party technology to secure files with customised watermarks, lock them from printing or to a single computer thus hindering unlimited and untraceable distribution of files.

In the same way that a CD single allows the consumer to preview the 'real thing' before buying the full CD, each ebook on OzAuthors has a free online preview, so you can try before you buy. Contrary to common belief, publishers too can benefit from providing samples of works online. A limited 10 page digital teaser of a novel can hook the reader and drive print sales, while statistics collected on sales and hits for a particular ebook can be used to justify a print run, or in the case of an author, provide leverage for securing a print deal.

All sales on OzAuthors are tracked and reported online to all related parties. This functionality allows all contributors to keep up-to-date with their market popularity and provides important feedback should they wish to adjust the pricing and usage accordingly. It is interesting to note, that detailed information on sales through traditional distribution channels is limited, therefore this tracking and reporting capability provides valuable and previously unavailable marketing information to publishers as well.

This is the most convincing argument for 'going digital', as all participants in the text food chain benefit from reduced costs. Self-publishing online is a cost-efficient solution for authors who need only cover the initial expense for formatting an electronic file and in the case of publishers, distribution & printing costs disappear and readers will benefit via cheaper sale prices. The user makes an additional 'time' saving with access to more powerful and refined search capabilities.

Once a file is digital it becomes highly flexible and can be segmented by part, chapter, and page or smaller. The level of granularity is limitless. This is particularly appealing to students who need only refer to a single chapter in a reference tome and educational institutions that must regularly compile and print course handbooks.

Print-on-demand combined with commercial digital printing services also opens up a new world of cost-effective textual printing and distribution. While traditional offset print runs break even at 2,000 copies, digital printing can facilitate a cost-efficient print run of 200 or less. This allows traditional publishers to relaunch back catalogues or small and independent publishers to publisher 'specialised' titles for niche markets, in an economically viable manner.

The final advantage is particularly important to the business of OzAuthors. OzAuthors is not just a place to purchase texts, it is also an online community center for new and published writers, independent and established publishers, educational institutions, students and anyone interested in the creation, consumption and enjoyment of texts to communicate through and learn from. OzAuthors provide resources, news and guidelines to skill all players in the creation, formatting and marketing of their works.

This 'market lifecycle' approach carries over into OzAuthors vision for the future. Through industry knowledge and the practical experience of the OzAuthors trial project, IPR Systems and the ASA, view OzAuthors as just a first step in a much bigger journey.

This journey will result in a new publishing 'ecology' where all players in the creation, provision, formatting, aggregation, distribution and usage of text will benefit - directly and indirectly - from the creation of pre-competitive and centralised infrastructure for storing and managing the distribution of all significant Australian texts.

The IPR and the ASA have labelled this project Digital Australia, and are lobbying the Federal government departments and ministers for Digital Australia which will:

digitise, preserve & make accessible our significant cultural creations to libraries, bookstores, publishers, printers, schools, creators & all Australians
require a combined effort from government, industry & creators
build critical mass & a local market for digital culture
provide a national infrastructure for online education, online content, e-commerce services, scientific & commercial research
protect and reward our creators and rights-holders
help defend Australia against 'digital' cultural imperialism

It is important to establish such a system now. As Australia enters the global knowledge economy we will have to compete with every country in the world on the basis of the quality of our education, innovation, cultural identity and the efficiency with which we can commercialise our knowledge. We believe that within 5 years, knowledge that is not fully accessible digitally will be deemed to not exist and therefore will have little commercial value. Australia must act now to take advantage of a one-off opportunity and take a leadership position in the provision of quintessential Australian knowledge in digital format as a foundation for online education, online content e-commerce services, and scientific and commercial research.

OzAuthors is just the first step towards Digital Australia, and just as OzAuthors and DBX can be conceptually and practically applied to any arts or cultural activities, so too can Digital Australia. And it must be to ensure that Australia's valency in the international knowledge economy is secured. To this end, I think that the ability to present and discuss OzAuthors and the related issues at a forum such as OzECulture is a wonderful opportunity and an important stepping-stone towards a Digital Australia.