Influences of Online Book Preview - Essay Example

? Influences of Online book preview Executive Summary The impact of the online book review has been a serious threat for the publishing house over the years. The rise in popularity of the internet and the facility provided to the readers to have an online preview of the books have seriously damaged the overall sales of the business. The availability of the free download options of the books has created a distance between the readers and the publishing house. The service providers of the online book preview have often been blamed for making the books available for public viewing without their prior permissions. Considering such situations the publishing hose have been suggested to start on a new venture of online publications of their books and sell their books via the popular retailers over the web space. The publishing house can also make some portion of their books available over the Internet which may act as an effective promotional campaign for their books. However they needs to be careful with such measures as often service providers can publish books online without their permission and also can make the books available for free download. Case of Google book copyright infringement has been referred to bring out a practical example of such copyright violations. The publishing house needs to be careful in implementing such measures as any negligence can further hamper their cause. Technology has improved rapidly in the past decade. It has made its prominence in almost all the sectors. Business houses all over the world have implemented the e-business to gain maximum profitability for their business. Digitalization of market has made it possible for the availability of almost everything over the internet. The number of technology savvy people has increased considerably all over the globe and people prefer to take the online help to meet their purpose. In such an era, digitalization of books has covered a large part of the e-market and is providing considerable amount of threat for the conventional publisher who does not have a considerable presence over the web. Furthermore the presence of the online book preview is hampering the business of the publishers to a large extent. Popularity of Online book preview Online book preview is available in many internet sites where the users can view the book in an electronic form. The electronic books are published over the internet which facilitates the users to have a glance of the whole book or a part of the book. The e books are readable on computers or in latest electronic devices. The existence of e book can be possible without any printed equivalence. The earlier version of the eBooks was available for specific purposes and in specialized areas and had limited number of viewers. Those form of e books or the online book preview options did not posed any considerable harm to the interest of the major publication houses and it was quite beneficial for the readers as well. However post 1990, internet broadened the option of the availability of the eBooks occurred in large scale. In the present market the online preview of books is available in many desired technological formats which have created more interest among the readers. Another feature of the online book preview really benefits the interest of the users which includes the free viewing. The users over the internet can virtually have a preview of their desired books for almost free, which further enhances their cause of the growing popularity of the medium. Other than the option of free viewing some internet sites also provides the option for the free download which comes as a gift for the millions of book readers. Nowadays users of internet can gain access to almost any books of their preferred subjects and choice and read them online. The online book preview provides facility also offers opportunity for the writers who cannot publish their books because of the denial from the publishers. They can make their books available to the readers through the online mode. The instantaneous access of the e books also inclines the readers towards such facilities. The facility of the online book review also creates an interest among the readers to purchase the material in the eBook format. Considering the abundance of the online book preview, the popularity of the eBook sales has also increased considerably and the market share of the major e book providers like Amazon have increased considerably over the years. One of the popular internet sites Google contains books scanned by them and converted into text and are then stored in their large data base. The users subscribed to the goggle books have the option of opening an interface where they can view the pages from the book. Google books are available in various forms like portable document format (pdf) and also in word document. For all the books available on the Google books, some of them have been permitted by the owners for the use of Google whereas others are out of the copyright liability. The books which are available under the public domain of the Google provide full view of the book and also have the option for free download. The popularity of google books can be gauged from the fact that it aims to posses more than 130 million books at the end of the decade (Albert and Tischler, 2011, p. 49). Influences of the online book preview on the publishing house: The age old print publication is receiving high alerts over the decade due to the popularity of the book preview online. As discussed above the book previews available are really cost effective and the users can download the books almost for free, the situation has become alarming for the publishers worldwide. With the books available for free over the net, it is quite a known fact that the readers and the customers try to refrain away from the publishers. The business has suffered considerably over the last decade. The sales of the publishing house have hardly taken an upward movement in competition with the free availability of the books. The publishing house also faced considerable amount of loss as they were unable to sell to the already printed books. In the present generation of technological innovation, the concept of the print publication is ceasing to exist. The writers of the books have also stayed away from the publishing house as they feel that their books will not gain much popularity if they are not available over the net. The online options provide them with much larger scale of publicity than the conventional sale of books through the major publishing house. The online mode is less secure and incidents of copyright infringement are very popular. Often complain was raised regarding the availability of the online preview of the copyrighted books without their prior permission and as a result the urge of the purchase of the books among the customers tends to decrease. Most of the marketing measures incorporated by the publishing house failed as it were found that high adherence to the internet failed to make a mark on the book readers and an attitude of searching the book online was noted. The impact of the online book preview have had a mammoth implication on the overall print publications Owing to such situations the publisher can take precautionary steps to prevent themselves from disastrous outcomes. The tremendous influence of the availability of the books online can force the publication houses to enter into contracts with the digital media. Publisher can opt for the online publication of their books to save their business from extinction. The growing preference of the use of the internet as a medium of purchase can also influence them to make such decisions. The organization can take the use of the internet as promotional tools. The organization can post their sample works online. In the last few years some publishers facing similar threat in their business have also offered the full titles to be posted over the internet. The sales of the online retailers have also been higher in the recent times due to the cooperation from the publishers willing to sell their books online. The organization can also make their books available for preview over the net but at the same time can prevent full access to the books as some pages can be omitted in the preview option. This strategy can prove to be beneficial for them as it will not hamper their sale significantly. The organization can also make the content and the outline of the books available for preview as this creates an opportunity for the readers to have a knowledge regarding what the book is all about. Putting some percentage of the books over the websites can also prove to be a major promotion for the tools and can also really boost the sales of the organization. In order to make the online presence of their books the organization can enter into an agreement with the major e-retailers like Google books and Amazon.com. The popularity of the websites will certainly have lot more viewers looking for their books and will help to provide a significant amount of sales. Though it is understood that entering into a contract with the major e retailers will make them liable to share a portion of their profit, but in the present economic distress which the organization is facing, the idea can prove beneficial to revive their market condition. The organization can also approach in a limited way to mark their presence in the virtual world. The option of providing hyperlink and excerpts though appears to be of limited use for the users but it can have a fundamental effect. Such measures can create added interest among the users to actually purchase the book and study the material. In the present context it can be suggested that the online presence of the organization is the only way out in view of the serious implication of the online book preview. Though the publication of the books have been a lucrative business but the popularity of the internet had forced many of the major publishers across the globe to opt for the new mode of the online publication and collaboration with various third party e-retailers. The legal context of online book review The publishing house has suffered considerably as it faced difficulties in putting u a good volume of sales owing to the online availability of the books. Few suggestions have been provided to restore back the financial performance of the organization. The option to go online and provide a portion of the books for free viewing also has some legal issues. Few offences can be committed by the websites present online in this regard. The most common among the can be the copy right violation. Websites can publish the full view of the books without prior permission from the authorities in order to popularize their business. They may also offer the free download of the books which may hamper the cause of the overall business of the publishing house. The possibility of the online view of the restricted books by the publishers can also be massive offence caused by them. The copyrighted works can also be freely distributed over the net. In respect of such offences committed by the websites the publishing house can face legal charges from the authors who did not want the distribution of the books over the virtual web space. The case of Google Book search: Google book search one of the most popular websites dealing with the online book preview faced a lawsuit in the year 2005 filed by the Authors Guild in New York. Google started the digitization of books in the libraries in the year 2002. In 2004 it expanded its operation by launching the Google book search options which enabled users to search the books of their choice in the Google data base. The users were also provided the option of downloading the full books which were made available in the public domain section. However for copyright protected books the users can only have a snippet view. The authors guild were of the view that copyright infringement was associated with the library project undertaken by Google, and charged Google with the offence of digitalizing the copyrighted books. Another case was filed against Google by the American Publishers association regarding the violation of copyright where they asked Google to provide injunctive relief. However Google was of the view that their practice was fair as they allowed only snippet view of the books which did not had any permission from their right holder. Based on the lawsuit charged Google and the Association of American Publishers entered into an agreement and Google had to pay a fine of massive $125 million out of which $45 million was charged by the right holder whose copyright have been violated. In exchange of the money which Google paid, they were allowed to carry on with their operation of the digitalization of books which they had discontinued on the onset of the legal case. The mutual agreement also provided the opportunity for Google to legalize matters relating to the subscriptions from various consumers and institutions which they receive for providing access to the books and also will have a claim on the advertising displayed on the pages of the books. The legal case which Google had to encounter showed that violation of the copyright is a serious offence to commit and at the same time it also reflected on the point that such violations provides huge loss to the publishers which Google had to compensate by paying a significant amount of money (Brito, 2011). Concluding remarks The overall study reflects that the mass popularity of the presence of the internet and the online book review in general have hampered the business of the publishing house. The option of viewing the book online prevents the buyer from the conventional purchase of the books. The overall business of the industry has also been hampered in the recent times due to the flexible options available over the internet. In order to revive the organization from the hard times various plans have also been suggested for the organization. Making some portions of the books available over the internet seems to be the best strategy for the organizations, as it will serve the purpose for both the customers and the publication house. The publishing house can also look to start the online publishing of the books and sell their books through proper e-retailers. However the organization needs to be careful with their copyright regulations as copyright violation is a popular web crime. They have to be careful with the availability of the books online as it has been noted that popular websites like Google books were alleged for the crime of copyright violations. It has to be accepted that though the option of internet have made life easier for the common people but certain sectors of businesslike the publication industry have been affected and they have to undergo a massive change in their overall strategy to hold their position in the competitive market. References Brito, J, (March23, 2011). Explaining the Google Books Case Saga, Time, available at: http://techland.time.com/2011/03/23/explaining-the-google-books-case-saga/(accessed on November 25, 2011) Albert, J and G. Tischler (2011), Ancient Typefaces and Parametric Weighted Finite Automata, Rainbow of Computer Science, Springer Read More