Textbook Profitability in the Digital Age: Challenges and Solutions

This report delves into the evolving landscape of textbook publishing in the digital age, examining how traditional publishers can navigate the shift from print to digital formats. It explores various strategies for generating revenue, such as direct online sales, collaborations with e-book platforms, and leveraging e-commerce integration. The report also addresses the significant challenges publishers face, particularly concerning copyright protection in an environment where digital content is easily copied and distributed. It highlights issues like market and management of rights, the limitations of copyright laws in the digital sphere, and the difficulty in enforcing copyright protections against infringers. The report discusses the impact of digital technologies on learning, the shift from traditional books to e-books, and the importance of adapting to these changes to ensure continued profitability and the protection of intellectual property in the face of evolving digital trends. The report also analyzes how the international community and new treaties are working to secure the rights of individuals in the digital age.

Information and
Digital Economics

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Challenges faced by traditional book publisher in digital age for protecting copy rights...........6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................2

Can publishers of traditional books (such as textbooks) make profits in the digital age-
explain how they might attempt this. What are the challenges to protecting their copy
rights?
INTRODUCTION
In digital era it has been easy to use internet for making huge profits. This is because
internet has provided a platform through which money can be earned. By offering services and
products on internet, companies are making profits. It has also changed the way of publishing
books and selling it. The free availability of books and libraries has created impact on its pricing.
In many countries publishers are selling books on internet. This essay will discuss that how a
publisher can make profits through selling of textbooks on internet.
MAIN BODY
In present time, internet has become a major source of income. People are highly using
internet to earn money by providing services and products online. In similar way digital
technology has allowed publisher as well to earn money. On internet many items are been sold
by companies. Similarly, textbooks, music, journals, articles, etc. are also available on internet.
By reading text books, it is easy for students to learn and study. In recent times publishing of
books has changed. Now, e books are easily available online (Reimers, 2016 ). It can be stated
that earlier textbooks were available only on stores and schools. But with advancement, there is
significant change in publishing. There are many publishers who want to earn money but are
only given small share in profits. But internet has allowed them to directly sell textbooks.
Through this they are able to earn profits. Earlier publishers were not having any resources
through which textbooks can be sold.
Basically, publishers are those companies that publish books. A book can be text book,
article, novel, etc. The publisher is having copyright given by author to sell books under
publication name.
The textbooks are main source of learning through which people can read and learn. Now, in
present times, publisher publish their books directly on internet. This is because use of digital
technology has transformed the way of earning money. Amazon was the first company that
provided books online. Also, they launched Kindle, an application through which publisher can
use it as a platform to reach large number of audience. Digital book distribution transformed the
way of offering books to people. Within an hour a publisher can sell thousands of copies of book
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through internet. Like Amazon many other companies also developed applications that can be
used by publisher. They also provide different types of services to people.
Here, it has become easy for publisher to deal with company that provides e books services.
The publisher makes a contract with author regarding the distribution of books. There are many
applications as well on which textbooks are available. Generally, textbooks can be easily
purchased by paying a small amount. Thus, a publisher can generate huge revenue from it.
Moreover, now it has been easy to read book through Amazon, Google, etc. they are platform via
which textbooks is purchased (Baensch, 2017). It has been analyzed that more than 13% of
publishers generate revenue by using the internet and companies. In e books, the publisher is
having rights of text books to be sold. The main advantage publisher has got is change in higher
educational system. It has allowed in generating more profits. Now, many companies and
publisher contact with publisher for publishing their books on website. In digital age textbooks
are easily available to people. Furthermore, with digitalisation in education the way of teaching
and learning is modified. The main features of e books are concentration of publishing firms in
large publishing groups that is owned by multi media companies. Alongside it, globalisation and
introduction of new technology has connected the world. Another is text digitisation which has
revolutionised the education.
A publisher can easily make profits through textbooks. He or she can collaborate with any
company which offers e book services. Here, publisher can sell copyright to company for selling
of text books. The company can sell text books and distribute profits. There is another way in
which publisher can sell text books on their own on any third party website. From this they can
also make profits. In this it is important for publisher to ensure that text book sold is original.
However, there are many things which need to be taken into consideration. In order to make
profits publisher can collaborate with authors. Then, they can develop own application or
website. It is essential to provide valid text books by publisher. With help of internet publisher
can charge price of text book from customers. There is one other way as well where publisher
can make profits. They can integrate with e commerce companies such as Amazon. Apart from
it, publisher can take help of Google e books.
The digital distribution of text books enables publisher to reach audience easily. They can
directly reach them and sell text books. In this way profit can be earned. There are several large
media house that sell text books. There are some self publication as well that exist but are not
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able to make profit. For a publisher it is very easy to make profits by selling text books. They
require copyright of author and protection of illegal use of website. But in digital era it publisher
has to ensure that text books sold are in legal way. In addition publisher needs expand its
network in order to generate sales and profits (Altbach and Hoshino, 2015). A publishing house
is having its own right of selling books. beside this, they face competition from other publishing
houses as well.
Digitalization age has limited the conceptual understanding of traditional book which
reflected collective information management by publisher. E books are in analogue form and
promote nuance understanding of facts where learners lack concepts and basis of many facts.
The generation is becoming dependent to limited information and learning. Digital business has
reshaped working patterns of industries like transformation of traditional books to e books which
is limiting knowledge of people to facts (Thoburn, 2016). Electronic books exist in different
formats like, EXE-compiled, PDF, HTML pages, etc. The change seems simpler and updated
but is people learning like the books are available in multimedia format where searching has
become simpler and therefore instead to reading each and things scholars try to search for
specific information with one click. The searching has become convenient for the readers and
that is why reader jump from specific information to specific information with the help of one-
word searches. The transformation helped people in saving money as e books are available at
cheap prices in comparison to traditional books (Leibowitz, 2018). Moreover, the viability has
become simpler and convenient and are giving people visual tactile satisfaction. Digital content
should be device independent, operating system independent and otherwise immortal in every
way. This volume starts with article by Ann Steiner known as “Selling books and Digital files: A
comparative study of the sales of books &E-books in Sweden. Steiner compares the present
day’s spread of the E-book within the Swedish book market to other changes in the book
publishing business using a historical approach. Changes concern not least an enhanced pressure
upon the book prices, changes in the market share of various types of sales channels and huge
range of books available in English. However, there are also differences such as growth of self
published titles & the increasing sales of specific genres. Along with this the general issue of
getting readers to pay for books, since the cost less availability of so many books & other
cultural products on internet also via public libraries puts pressure on prices of books.
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Challenges faced by traditional book publisher in digital age for protecting copy rights
Protecting copy rights in digitalization age is the major concern for the publishers as the
generation has progressed from typewriters, to xerox and now computers. The most common
challenge faced by traditional book publishers in protecting copy right is market and
management of rights. This arise due to collective management of rights with regard to market
response to inefficiency of licenses to large number of users to large number of works. The
information structure continuously changes and therefore publishers are focusing on managing
right individually. In digital age copy right has becoming challenges for traditional publishers
because laws of copyrights are limited to first sale rule where the owners of copy right can
protect information in between of vendor to purchaser. However, the publishers cannot control
distribution of copies from the person who has purchased information. The purchasers are free
to lend, resell or rent purchased copy. The first sales rule is applicable to libraries and book
stores who own control of copyright.
Maintaining the framework of exclusive right
As the technology is advancing very rapidly in the current scenario it is getting tougher
for the traditional writer to maintain the framework of exclusive right as the degree at which
technology has advanced it has facilitated rapidly. International community has played a good
attention toward securing the need of the existing framework of the exclusive right, as a result
new exclusive copyright treaty have been introduced which looks at the safeguarding the rights
of the individual, but traditional writer has to face the challenge of copy writing their traditional
copyright at the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) which is not an easy task for the individual as it
goes through a lengthy process to copy wright it, this law was implanted just after digital
technology became prevalent in the new era of the technology (Stokes, , 2019). WCT sees that
the certain exclusive right should be provided to the individual so that they feel secure from the
Digital communication platform like Internet but it does not mean that the author cannot upload
their material, author are allowed to upload their data and all the user on the internet can
download the material with the due permission of the author, which is a big plus point of the
WCT but in general it proves as a challenge for the author to register their data at the WCT. This
is the challenges which is generally Faced by the author at the early stages of itself (Sinha and
Mahalwar, 2017).
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Restricting scope for development of Secondary Liability in Digital Age
Nowadays it is very easy for any individual to reach a million consumers by distributing
their work through online measures like the format of E-copy etc. this can be achieved with the
minimum investment. The easy availability of content online paves an easy for infringement and
copyright problems. The real problem is the difficulty in locating such elements infringing the
work by original writers or content creators. Even if in the rare cases, where the owners are able
to identify those criminals, they are not able to extract the penalty amount from such infringers
as there is no strict regulation.
Recently, UK has created a new law where instead of the individuals doing copyright
infringement, the authorities hold the networks or sites responsible for such infringement who
are making the work available without prior permission from the original writers. The software
developed for such illegal copying of work have also been identified and strict action has been
taken against the creators of such software.
However, the courts are having trouble in penalizing the secondary sources i.e. sources
which actually took benefit from such illegal work. The problem is arising due to the counter
provision of freedom where every individual is allowed to write and learn from everything that is
available on the internet. Thus, the area of secondary liability might be an area in which much
development can be practiced by developing proper identification mechanisms especially after
considering the massive development in data available online in today's era of global
development.
Reducing inefficient for subsequent users
From the past decades, Internet provides users variety of different information at all types
such as from text to photographs, music to audiovisual work etc. Apart from this, Internet also
provides individual an ability to become an author by creating their own work (Savelyev, 2018).
Such that the author makes also use some material which they find but on the other side, they
must make sure about the copyright status as well as to who to ask for the permission too. In this
case, Collective Licensing of work also assist an author to provide systematic mechanism so that
an individual get permission. In this, the author face challenge such that how the law should treat
and this is known as Orphan Works. In this, the copyright owner of the work did not care for the
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subsequent use and even they should not prevent because of the uncertainty of their work status.
Therefore, this result will also worsen the public access to a new and productive use of the work,
that is actually a goal of all copyright system (Brewster, Mayrhofer and Morley, 2016).
In order to overcome the issue, many countries begun an inquiry in copyright office that
helps to determine the issue and nature of a problem and it also addresses the legal solution to
them. For example, in Canada, it has already established a system relate to the orphan work.
Therefore, it complies with all international copyright rules which restrict the imposition of
formalities (Barber, 2019).
 A range of legal requirement: As per the provisions relating to the intellectual property
right act, a publisher of book needs to take copy right on the content of book. For this
purpose, the publisher needs to comply with several legal requirements. As per the
provisions mentioned in laws relating to intellectual property, in order to take copy right
over the book, it is required that the contents of book should involve new ideas relating to
the reader, it should contain information relating to new philosophy as well, etc. Further,
it is also required that no content of book should be copied from any another book
published earlier. In this regard, it can be said that the publisher of traditional books need
to fulfil a range of legal requirements at the time of taking copy right.
 Copy right procedure: In order to obtain a copy right over a book published by the
publisher, it is required to follow up a lengthy copy right procedures. The provisions
regarding intellectual property and copy right states that at the time of obtaining
copyrights, it is required to mention appropriate symbol of copyright, date of publication
of book, take registration of the copyright, etc. It requires a huge amount of publisher and
time of publisher as well.
 Protection against infringement: The next major challenge faced by the publisher is to
develop the procedure in order to protect their copy right from being infringed (Common
Publishing Legal Issues and How To Avoid Them, 2018). For this purpose, the publisher
may need to appoint a separate employee and provide them a training in order to conduct
suitable procedure regarding protecting the copy right to be infringed. It may increase the
cost of operations of publisher. Licensing requirement: It is a major task of a publisher of traditional books to maintain
control and ownership over the license of the copyright. Further, in case, the publisher is
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transferring the licensing rights to another party, it is required to be cautious and maintain
the major rights with them. Author Grants : It is one of the challenge which is commonly faced by the publishers
wherein the rights from the authors have to be obtained in a proper manner for avoiding
any legal actions against the publishers. Publisher can do so by becoming the exclusive
licensee of all the copyrights established by the author. Internet and electronic uses : A contract must be made which clearly states the rights
of publishers that it can publish the books on the internet in the e-book form. The
publisher until and unless has the clear about the same, cannot automatically presume and
publish the book in the electronic form over the Internet. This will create an issue for the
publisher and might evolve it in the actions taken by the authors against it.
CONCLUSION
It can be summarised from above that digital era has revolutionised the way of making money. It
has allowed companies to offer products and services to people in easy way. With help of
internet publisher can easily make profits by selling text books. It provides them a platform to
reach large audience. Moreover, there are different publisher houses that publishes various types
of books. For this publisher require to collaborate with authors. The main challenge in protecting
property rights are such as Reducing inefficient for subsequent users, a range of legal
requirement, Protection against infringement, etc.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Savelyev, A., 2018. Copyright in the blockchain era: Promises and challenges. Computer law &
security review.34(3). pp.550-561.
Brewster, C., Mayrhofer, W. and Morley, M. eds., 2016. New challenges for European resource
management. Springer.
Stokes, S., 2019. Digital copyright: law and practice. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Sinha, M.K. and Mahalwar, V. eds., 2017. Copyright Law in the Digital World: Challenges and
Opportunities. Springer.
Reimers, I., 2016. Can private copyright protection be effective? Evidence from book
publishing. The journal of law and economics, 59(2), pp.411-440.
Altbach, P.G. and Hoshino, E.S., 2015. International book publishing: An encyclopedia.
Routledge.
Baensch, R. ed., 2017. The publishing industry in China. Routledge.
Thoburn, N., 2016. Anti-book: On the art and politics of radical publishing. U of Minnesota
Press.
Online
Leibowitz, G., 2018. 7 Reasons Why Ebook Sales Are Falling--and Print Book Sales Are Rising
Again. [Online]. Available through: <https://www.inc.com/glenn-leibowitz/heres-why-
an-ebook-can-never-live-up-to-joy-of-reading-an-old-fashioned-hardcover.html>.
Common Publishing Legal Issues and How To Avoid Them, 2018. [ONLINE} available through
<https://www.morse.law/news/publishing-legal-issues>
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