E-books in Greece – some thoughts (1)

When we at Ikaros began exploring the world of ebooks in 2009, I must admit that I knew only the very basics and was completely ignorant of the technologies and specifications involved in such a book – or file.At that time, Greece had neither the market nor the know-how, with very few exceptions.In most cases, publishers were very to extremely reluctant to proceed with the creation and distribution of ebooks, whilst those who did dare to do so usually did so under pressure from various resellers, who hoped in this way to get in on the act early, securing a large catalogue of digital books, as well as recognition from the reading public.There were two factors that played a role in overcoming the resistance of most publishers, or at least those who ultimately decided to enter the digital book market: ease of use and zero production costs. Once you have a file ready in the page-layout programme, why not turn it into a PDF and release it as an ebook as early as tomorrow? The truth is, it sounded so easy and straightforward that we even released a few trial books in PDF format. As far as I know, not a single copy has been sold. I’ve noticed that most digital books released in PDF format have exactly the same ISBN as the corresponding print edition. But how wrong that is! Every ISBN is a unique serial number that identifies a publication. We cannot have the same code whether we are talking about a printed book, a digital book, or even different formats of the same digital book (PDF, EPUB, Kindle). As the boundaries between print and digital blur, it will become increasingly important to be as precise as possible with metadata—the details of each edition. Imagine an online bookshop that sells both print and digital books. A search based on the ISBN will return a single result, but which one? A lot of time has passed since then, with plenty of reading, research and experimentation. Our ebooks are now in EPUB format and are available from our website, online stores, and Apple’s iBookstore. Sales are satisfactory, although they clearly still account for a very small percentage of the total.I am struck by how many colleagues continue to prefer the easy option of PDF. And that’s a shame. Because we are in a profession that has been changing radically over the last two years, and will change even more. The way we publishers work will not be the same, and if we do not change too, we will be left behind. We must evolve, learn new things, and learn to work differently. Abroad, this shift in the way traditional publishers operate is more evident than ever, and publishing companies are taking action. The reading public has expectations. Let us listen to them and anticipate them, before developments overtake us.