(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

Please welcome Vincent Tan, Website In A Weekend’s newest guest author. Vincent, also known as The Polymath Programmer, hails from Singapore and publishes an online magazine called “Singularity” on a (roughly) monthly basis. Vincent’s talents are manifold, as one would expect from a polymath. (He does video, too, so don’t miss him on Youtube.) In the latest issue of Singularity, Vincent had the following to say about ebooks and publishing, and I just had to have it for Website In A Weekend. With great pleasure, Vincent Tan.

Ebooks: authority, authentication and trust

There was an unconference called BarCampSG7 held in Singapore in September 2011. One of the speakers was Peter Schoppert, who talked about ebooks and the publishing industry. Now for ebooks, Peter was referring to the ePub format, and not books in electronic form (such as PDFs). In particular, he’s talking about books read on e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle, Nook and even mobile devices.

The ePub format is basically a combination of technologies. XHTML for content, CSS for styling, and JavaScript for some interactivity. You don’t need to know the actual technologies involved. Just know that because the content is in XHTML format, the content flows around any textual container easily.

This means whatever device you’re using to read the content, the text automatically flows nicely to fit your screen. Compare this with a PDF, where the text and layout are fixed. In terms of publishing, the major publishing houses have some problems.

From a business standpoint, authentication is problem number 1.

You buy a physical book, and it’s yours. You can give it to a family member, lend it to a friend, or even just throw it away.

For ebooks, the publishing houses want to control your ownership. Because after you buy the ebook, it’s extremely easy to just copy and paste and give the copies to anyone. The physical book has a limit, that of itself. The electronic book can be copied infinitely.

This is why the publishers (Apple iTunes, Amazon Kindle) have authentications that tie the bought ebook to an account you own.

This means you can’t give or lend the ebook to anyone else. Unless you give your account away.

You also can’t mix accounts.

Think about it. You can buy books from a small bookstore, or a large chain, or from the Internet (Amazon for example), and they’re still yours. But ebooks bought for a particular e-reader have to be read on that e-reader, using the account you have with the e-reader’s publisher.

Another problem is with authority.

Generally speaking, a physical book carries with it the weight of the publishing house behind it. A publisher has vetted the book and deemed it “worthy” of publishing it. An ebook can be published by anyone, and thus only have the credibility of the author behind it. Although anyone can now self-publish and have a physical copy of your book, so even physical books need to go through that credibility test.

The crux of the matter seems to be with trust and credibility. This has moved from the publisher to the author. Think on this question:

Do you trust a publishing house or an author more?

When you’re considering buying a book (physical or electronic), do you now want to know who wrote the book, or who published the book?

Vincent Tan is a mathematician and programmer, and writes at Polymath Programmer. He makes YouTube videos and also publishes an online magazine for the curious called Singularity, covering science, art and culture with an emphasis on Singapore and loaded with great photography. Subscribe to Singularity, you’ll be glad you did.