eBooks in Australia - What went wrong?

Renai LeMay
Friday, 18 March 2011 17:18

IT People - People

Check out his site oz-e-books.com for more articles about e-book readers, retailers, formats and news (or will have when Darryl can be drawn away from reading Delimiter). The views expressed here do not reflect the views of his employer, the ATO.

opinion Last year there was a feeling that Australia was entering a new age of digital books. Borders introduced its Kobo reader, software and retail platform, Apple introduced its iBooks software and store and Amazon finally allowed Aussies to access the Kindle Bookstore and introduced a worldwide Kindle device. Yet almost a year later, we have REDGroup (owner of Borders) in administration, almost no commercially available books in the iBookstore and a limited range of titles available in the Amazon Kindle marketplace.

So what happened?

1. Publishers.
Publishers in Australia refuse to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century, let alone the 21st century. They successfully lobbied the government to prevent parallel importing of books into Australia, despite a comprehensive report from the Productivity Commission.

The territorial rights also means that books available in the US and UK eBook stores have to be negotiated for another country. This adds a layer of legal paperwork that most companies seem to enjoy avoiding. The Borders/Kobo alliance was negotiating the agreements required, however the collapse of the REDGroup retail business and the uncertainty caused has put a damper on to this. Apple and Amazon have made little effort in working to gain the territorial rights, and the only large player who could negotiate these agreements, Google and its eBook platform, has yet to enter the marketplace.