Cook Partners

Nigeria: Publisher Denouces "Cankerworm" of Piracy

The Sun News Online interviewed Sir John Odike, the managing director of Africana First Publishers, an educational publisher in Onitsha, Anambra State, Nigeria:

Book piracy is a monster that must be crushed. It is a hydra-headed evil that should be eliminated. You see, pirates produce inferior quality books, sell at cheap prices to undo us. This is the most potent threat to the publishing industries today. Which ever way you look at it, piracy threatens our existence if it is allowed to continue unchecked.

I now use this medium to call on Nigeria Copyright Commission to re-strategize so that this cankerworm does not cripple genuine publishing business.

"Copyright Asteroid Hurtling Toward Earth, Impact Due 2013"

 E-Reads author Richard Curtis writes about the impact that a clause in the U.S. Copyright Act of 1978 may have on the publishing industry, quoting Evan Schnittman, a Vice President of Business Development and Rights for Oxford University Press, and Mike Shatzkin, "media guru."

Long Tails, Starving Legal Tails, Skinny Pirate's Tails

What impact does illegal file-sharing have on the results predicted by the long tail theory with regard to product sales? A Wired article reports,

“Consumers are ... driven to seek the same music in legal and illegal markets,” reads the report (.PDF), published Thursday by BigChampagne Media Measurement and music rights organization PRS for Music. “The most swapped files were also the most downloaded on legal music sites, indicating that what’s popular is popular.”

Though the report applies to music rather than books, publishers might anticipate similar sales curves as electronic books gain popularity.

USA: Pirated Versions of Print Books on Web

The New York Times reports that while "for now, electronic piracy of books does not seem as widespread as what hit the music world," new technologies are making piracy easier:

Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. What’s more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version.

Now, with publishers producing more digital editions, it is potentially easier for hackers to copy files. And the growing popularity of electronic reading devices like the Kindle from Amazon or the Reader from Sony make it easier to read in digital form. Many of the unauthorized editions [found on sites like Scribd and Wattpad] are uploaded as PDFs, which can be easily e-mailed to a Kindle or the Sony device.

US, UK Publishers To Sell More English-Language Titles in Foreign Markets

The Guardian notes:

Across the world, the appetite for English language books is booming and publishers struggling under the weight of the recession in their core markets of the US and UK are increasingly turning their sights overseas. ...

A combination of the recession, which has pared back consumer spending, and a longer-term demographic change brought about by a fall-off in population, is hitting book sales in the US and Britain. Both markets are still the largest for English language publishers, but growth has stalled.

The article highlights India and China as the markets with greatest potential for increasing sales of English titles overseas. The Guardian article focuses on the foreign branches of publishers such as HarperCollins, Penguin and Random House, but does not offer the perspectives of independent indigenous publishers. For an alternative view, consider Barine Kirimi's "Publishing Trends and Their Effect on Publishers in the Developing World," from Cook Partners magazine.

Piracy, Distribution Problems in Kenya

The Daily Nation in Nairobi reports that pirated versions of a University of Oxford Press dictionary for students flooded the market before the real version was released. The situation, says Nancy Karimi, chairperson of the Kenya Publishers’ Association,is happening because

“Booksellers are giving pirates a market,” she says. “Pirates offer booksellers very high discounts of up to 50 per cent.”

The article continues:

Stories abound in publishing circles about how booksellers have formed cartels which ride roughshod over publishers, demanding unrealistic discounts. And, in most cases, publishers cave in to the demands.

Failure to comply with the booksellers’ demands often comes with a heavy price. Some of the rogue booksellers conspire to lock ‘‘uncooperative’’ publishers from their regions.

Fighting Piracy in China, France and Sweden

The Telegraph reports on "a new initiative to crack down on internet piracy" in France, where legislation that

... could be approved within weeks [would mandate that] illegal downloaders would be barred from broadband access by their internet service providers after three warnings.

The three-strikes law would see a first warning by email, then a letter through the post, followed by the connection being cut off for up to a year. A proposed state agency would gather the internet protocol addresses of people involved in illegal file-sharing.

The article also mentions a "breakthrough" in China:

Warner, Sony, Universal and 140 independent labels have signed a deal with Google allowing free downloads on the Chinese site Top100, which will give them a slice of advertising revenue.

They may have been forced into this free solution by the fact that 99pc of downloads in China are illegal. But if the website drives traffic and attracts advertising, it could create a new model. All eyes will now be on the website to see how much money Google can make for its partners.

These solutions are oriented to the music industry, of course, but they may be applicable to the publishing industry as well, where piracy of electronic books is a growing concern, as documented in this article from The Guardian on Scribd.com, a company based in San Francisco that claims to have "more than 50 million readers a month, with more than 50,000 new documents uploaded by users every day." Marketwire adds that Simba Information's Trade E-Book Publishing 2009 " estimates that ... 8% of U.S. adults bought at least one e-book in the last 12 months, and 15% read one."

Meanwhile,

The same day a new anti-piracy law went into effect in Sweden, Internet traffic took a dive and five audio book publishers went after an alleged illegal file sharer in court.

The so-called IPRED law, which went into effect Wednesday, requires Internet service providers to reveal subscribers' Internet Protocol addresses to copyright holders in cases where a court finds ample evidence of illegal activity.

As of 2 p.m. local time Wednesday in Sweden, Internet traffic was down about 30 percent from the day before, according to Computer Sweden (in Swedish).

The Swedish Publishers Association supports the law. Read more here.

Europe: Keep Copyright Law As Is

From Bookseller.com:

The Federation of European Publishers (FEP) has opened a petition calling for the European Parliament to maintain current European copyright law. The petition has also been posted on the website of the French Publishers Association (Syndicat National de l’Edition, SNE) and has been signed by 88 publishers, including representatives from Hachette [which includes Faith Words and Windblown Media among its imprints], Eyrolles, and Vuibert.

Publishers are worried that the parliament will weaken copyright protection during its debate on a report on copyright in the European Union (EU)...

Read the rest of the article here.

How does the Google Settlement Impact Publishers Outside the U.S.?

If you follow developments in the U.S. publishing industry, you have surely heard that Google settled a lawsuit brought forward by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The Publisher's Post, an Indian newsletter for publishers, succintly summarizes the news:

The settlement, if court-approved, will authorize Google to scan in-copyright books and inserts in the United States, and maintain an electronic database of Books. For out-of-print books and, if permitted by rights holders of in-print books, Google will be able to sell access to individual books and institutional subscriptions to the database, place advertisements on any page dedicated to a book, and make other commercial uses of books. At any time, rights holders can change instructions to Google regarding any of those uses. Through a Book Rights Registry established by the settlement, Google will pay rights holders 63 percent of all revenues from these uses.

... For persons outside the United States, this settlement may affect you because it covers U.S. copyright interests in books published outside the United States. If you hold such an interest in a book or other material in a book, this settlement will bind you unless you timely opt out.

IIPA's Assesment of Piracy

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a coalition of several trade associations representing 1,900 U.S. media companies, has offered its recommendations to the U.S. government for its "annual review of intellectual property protection and market access practices in foreign countries." The IIPA: 

recommends that 13 countries be placed on the Priority Watch List in 2009: Argentina, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, People's Rupublic of China, the Philippines, Russia, and Thailand.

The IIPA lists another 25 countries on its Watch List "for recent troubling and/or enforcement developments in their respective markets." To see the report and estimated losses due to piracy, visit the IIPA site.