Comparisons between ebooks and anime fansubs

[nekokami]

The state of ebooks right now reminds me a bit of the state of anime (Japanese animation) videos in the US a few years back. It was difficult to get copies at all, and most movies and TV series were not translated to English yet. The copyright holders weren't convinced the market was there. So fans would buy laserdiscs from Japan, transcribe the audio, translate it, and add English (or other language) subtitles to videotapes, which they would then swap or sell at cost. There was a tacit understanding that the Japanese copyright holders would look the other way so long as a commercial translations were not yet available, knowing, presumably, that this activity was building a potential market for them. When "real" translated copies of the same titles eventually came on the market, those fans stopped distributing their versions (most did, anyway), and many made a point of purchasing the commercial copies. It didn't hurt that the newly available commercial copies were often on DVD with many "extras" that the fansubs hadn't had -- choice of dubbing vs. subtitles, choice of subtitle language, extra interviews, etc., and were generally of much higher video quality than the VHS tapes that had been traded around. Anime is now a top-selling video category in the US.

It would be nice to see the same sort of attitude from book publishers right now. Good reading devices are in the early stages, and the market is not yet developed. We're in the "chicken and egg" state of not having a large enough market for publishers to see the value of making their content available in electronic format yet, but there also isn't enough content yet to drive many customers to invest in these early reading devices. (I know, some people are perfectly happy reading on a PDA or phone-- I think most prefer a larger screen for serious reading, and one which can be read in a wider variety of lighting conditions than a laptop, e.g. outdoors.)

Fan distribution of eBooks-- at least, those that are not yet available as commercial eBooks-- could really help build this market. It is happening anyway, as we all probably know. Book fans who are able to get copies of favorite books in txt format now may be quite willing to pay for higher quality formatted versions later-- especially if publishers follow the example of the anime distributors and add in some extras to sweeten the deal-- multiple language versions, for example, or previously unpublished author essays or reviews. Publishers also need to remember to keep prices comparable to what customers are used to paying for similar goods -- DVDs were not generally able to command a much higher price than VHS tapes without including a lot more content.

And, as we've all commented here, publishers really need to pay attention to how customers use existing books, including loans and resales, when considering issues like cost and DRM. Books are owned for generations; they are often given away, loaned, or sold; they are often bought second hand. Publishers may not like these facts, but they are a part of the book culture that is not going to change quickly, if at all. I personally think DRM is against the interests of publishers as well as readers, because I believe most customers would be willing to pay a reasonable price for a legal copy of anything they care enough about to download and read, and a free sample is likely to generate more sales, not less. But if publishers insist on crippling copies of their books with DRM, perhaps they need to consider the movie rental analogy, and charge a fraction of the price they would expect to get for the full version of a book. I personally would rather pay paperback-comparable prices and get paperback-comparable rights.

[tcv]

Good points, neko. I think you could also find parallels with scanlation projects. I do notice, however, that Japanese countries aren't looking away as often anymore. Popular scanlation and dub/sub sites are getting cease-and-desist letters more often and projects are having to go more underground. I think it's because it's becoming so much easier to push projects into the U.S. that companies want to protect any possible profitability there.

[nekokami]

Interesting -- I'd missed the scanlation phenomenon. (I always got my manga fix with the Japanese originals or Chinese translations with a separate text file for the English.)

I agree that the change in stance by Japanese companies is probably due to the growing market in the US, and that's partly my point. Japanese companies did look the other way when the market was immature; I contend that the eBook market is similarly immature now and book publishers would do well to tacitly condone eBook filesharing, especially for older works. They shouldn't ignore it, though -- noting which text files are worth sharing around (and which are even worth formatting in RTF, PDF, etc. -- Harry Potter, anyone?) could give them a good idea of the strength of the market for those titles and authors, just as noting which fansubs and scanlations were popular gave American translation companies a good idea of which titles were worth pursuing commercially in the US.

Eventually, I think it would be reasonable (or at least unsurprising) for book publishers to object to such filesharing, once there is a strongly established eBook market. But I think it would be in their interests to just watch and wait for now.

What eBook filesharers could probably do to help this process along would be to break up large collections of eBooks currently being circulated into smaller units, e.g. by author, so the publishers can see a more clear value to the "market research" being generated. (Publishers might find it more convenient to see the data broken out by publisher, but I can't see anyone in the filesharing community going to the trouble of finding out who the current publisher/copyright holder of a work is, and anyway the correlation between authors and publishers is fairly strong.)

[tcv]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Japanese companies did look the other way when the market was immature; I contend that the eBook market is similarly immature now and book publishers would do well to tacitly condone eBook filesharing, especially for older works.

Hmmm...

Is it possible that Japan is also getting much more savvy at using the American Legal System? Companies seem very quick to sue here, perhaps because it's quite simple to do it? And so many of the publishing companies are so large and employ legal armies. I can't seem them looking the other way unless there's someone else performing a worse infraction in that other direction!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Although I like the idea, I think the drubbing taken by Blackmask.com will set the precedent in the U.S. E-books are more similar to MP3s than manga and anime, and the publishers don't seem to be able to see e-books in any other way than that (nor figure out another way to deal with it).

I do agree that a major advantage publishers could take advantage of, would be the packaging of "extras" in e-books to attract customers. Extra content, excerpts, ads, discounts, etc, would be a great way to convince people to try e-books. It would work for readers, too. Tie the two together... extra content or ease of use, optimized for a particular reader... and you've got a great marketing package.

I don't think we can rely on the publishers to go out of their way for us... they've demonstrated a total lack of willingness to do so. I think it will end up being up to the reader-makers (iRex, Sony, etc) to work out such packages, then make deals with publishers to supply the content (the iTunes formula at work). Sort of a bass-ackwards way of doing it, but a more likely way it'll happen.

Or...

Given the number of online news experiments going on, it may be more likely that a periodical/reader cooperative will create the market, and book publishers will sign themselves onto the bandwagon after it's built and rolling.