Books will survive, but not on paper

When I read recently that sales of the new Kindle e-reader in the US have not been as huge as anticipated, I must confess that my first feeling was one of relief. In the course of the past week I have acquired a new phone that does everything but feed the cat and an equally complicated camera. Both have necessitated lengthy tutorials from my son and I'm going through a fit of technology overload.

When US digital guru Bob Stein and I sat down at the Melbourne Writers Festival last month to discuss the future of the book, we were searching for common ground. Bob is one of those guys who calls books user-driven media. I'm one of those women of a certain age who belongs to a book club and can't get on a plane without at least one novel in my hand luggage.

Nevertheless, while Bob and I may disagree about the sanctity of an author's work and certain aspects of copyright, we were certainly on the same page in acknowledging that the paper book, as we know it, will gradually disappear from our shelves over the next 10 years.

I welcome the day when I can ditch that heavy book and download a dozen titles on to my lightweight e-reader before I fasten my seatbelt.

It was with this in mind that I approached the director of the Melbourne Writers Festival to discuss Australia Council support for the Digital Publishing Program. With the commercial success of the Kindle in the US and publishers in Britain already squabbling over royalty rates for e-books, it is essential for Australian publishers to be ready to go when this technology arrives in our stores.

The period of transition from book to e-book will be particularly hard for our smaller publishing houses. Setting a manuscript in user-friendly digital format is not simply a matter of pressing a few buttons.

While the multinationals are already taking advantage of both the publishing and global marketing opportunities offered by the new technologies, small independent publishers are struggling. Operating on low staffing levels and even lower profit margins, they do not have the necessary in-house expertise or the IT equipment capable of taking on this new level of sophistication.

Paradoxically, I believe that those who have already gone to an all digital output, investing in skills and technology rather than paper, have more chance of keeping pace with their more powerful rivals. It's the cost of putting out simultaneous online and paper versions of a book that will put some companies out of business.

It is equally important for writers to stay in touch with the complex field of digital rights management and subsequent royalty payments. Random House UK is in trouble for setting digital royalty rates below other publishers. Random is quoting 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent as a norm, while the original rate had been set at 25 per cent.

These rates can only be good news for writers, who at present expect a royalty between 8 per cent and 10 per cent for a conventional paper book. But they need to get canny about the variations between different territorial and new media rights attached to their book contracts.

Intellectual property lawyer Zoe Rodriguez discussed these issues with authors' literary agent Sophie Hamley and Elizabeth Weiss, digital publishing director at Allen & Unwin. Rodriguez has strong views on the rights of the author to recognition and payment, while Stein's views on intellectual property are rather more fluid.

At some point, these ideologies will need to find a meeting place and it will not be easy to define.

Of course, a number of leading Australian publishers have already established strategies to take them into the new markets offered by the digital world.

For a number of years, the Australia Council has funded online journals and we are viewing with particular interest the rise of the well-written blog. Canadian blogger Christian Lander's Stuff White People Like was picked up by Random House for print publication and subsequently optioned for film. Our own Marieke Hardy was the key speaker at this year's NSW Premier's Book Awards.

Equally, over the past year I have had two separate approaches from leading Australian critics who want to create an online literary review, with the editorial integrity of, say, the New York or London reviews of books.

Writers with ambitions to self-publish online will need to develop advanced technical and presentation skills. They need to be aware that online distribution is not necessarily a splendid opportunity for all those authors whose manuscripts have been rejected by hard-hearted editors.

While the internet is touted as a medium for global exposure, where previously unknown artists can find instant fame, this has certainly not been the case for the music industry.

Despite the universal appeal of the iPod and downloadable music, it has been established that fewer than 80 per cent of songs published on the net without the marketing push of the recording companies, achieve more than a handful of sales.

It is certainly a fact that those book publishers who are ahead of the game are taking advantage of the internet for marketing, rather than innovations in text.

Poetry publishing has always been a risky business and I am convinced that the new interest in poetry and poetry slams that we are seeing today is a direct consequence of online publication.

Today's poetry reader can take their virtual trolley to a one-stop shop, collect poems of their choice and have them delivered as a personalised anthology of favourites. Or why not download a love poem to your mobile phone and send it as a Valentine?

In place of black marks on a white page, the words of a digital poem can dance across the screen to a background of moving images and seductive sound.

There is an air of wait-and-see in Australian publishing. Australians read more books per capita than any other nation and I still see more people on public transport reading books than I see game-playing on their phones or laptops.

There is no doubt that a huge marketing campaign will accompany the arrival of the Kindle in 2010 and it will be interesting to see the effects on publishers and book-buyers.