Authors hesitate to embrace e-books

E-books are an upcoming phenomenon at the moment. Many people see e-books as the future. However, some authors find it hard to believe the emergence of e-books will benefit their business . Two Danish authors, Leif Davidsen and Jussi Adler-Olsen, announced that they are not offering their latest books as e-books. The two authors are afraid that their e-books will be copied and they think that the prices for e-books are to low.

E-books by Davidsen and Adler-Olsen are currently available throughout Europe. However, the new books of the authors won’t be available as e-books. The authors believe the risk of their work being copied is too big at this moment. Although some of this fear is understandable - copying digital documents is relatively easy, this isn’t an entirely new phenomenon in the publishing world. Traditional books have always been passed on to family and friends.

Perhaps authors need to deal with the fact that their work will be distributed through digital channels. A great example is the online Harry Potter store of J.K. Rowling. If authors offer digital versions of their work through official channels, maybe less illegal versions will be downloaded.

You can watch a video about the future of publishing here.

Read more about e-books on FutureofCopyright.com:

• Survey suggests e-book piracy may become worse than music piracy
• Ebooks taking a larger and larger share of the book publishing market

Reference: Ereaders.nl

By: Karen Groen