At NUP we are constantly working towards developing a workable online presence. The biggest fear we have, as many other publishers, it seems will be the loss in our revenue stream. This posting from BitTorrent: 'eBook Puracy 'Surges' After iPad Launch' indicates that since the release of the iPad research suggests there has been an increase in downloads of ebooks but also states it is currently fairly paltry in comparison to that of film and music downloads. The posting does suggest a good reason for this poor showing: only a small number of people actually own an iPad.
David Carnoy also agrees with this low sales reason stating 'At the moment, book piracy is dwarfed by that of the music, movie and game industries. But it is gradually growing'.
The research from BitTorrent does contain a problem (which is mentioned), this being that only one download service was examined. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of these sites online making the sample size far too small meaning the results cannot be generalised to all consumer behaviour.
But the research does pose the question, which is on every Publishers mind, should we be worried about our online content ? Can we do more to protect it?
We think only time can really tell us how much of an impact piracy will have on our eBook sales, but for now we need to concentrate on our strategies for getting our ebooks out there and keeping them protected.
NUP
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