Turkey’s transition to e-books not without glitches

The idefix catalogue currently has only about a few hundred e-books, but the Web site predicts the number of Turkish e-books for sale to reach 6,000 by the end of the year and to further increase to 30,000 within two years. These numbers might seem tiny compared to North America, for instance, where e-book sales generated $1.5 billion last year, according to estimates of PricewaterhouseCoopers. This figure is expected to reach $2.5 billion by the end of 2010 and to represent about 6 percent of total book sales, up from 1.5 percent last year.

But the Turkish book market is a rather small one, with only 300,000 to 400,000 regular readers and around only 30,000 titles published annually. And this upward trend experienced in the globally fledgling digital publishing sector is anticipated to be seen also in the Turkish e-book market, though not in the short run.

Mehmet İnhan, general manager of idefix, believes that the transition from books to electronic ones will take some time. He enumerated the reservations of publishing houses preventing them from becoming involved in the process at this time but rather waiting some time to see what will happen next. “The contracts between publishers and authors, for instance, will need to be renewed to cover the transfer of digital copyrights. This is a process. It doesn’t have to be problematic, but they are refraining from taking action for some reason,” said İnhan, but still acknowledging the concerns of publishers due to a number of unsolved problems.

Ümit Aktaş, secretary-general of the Publishers’ Professional Association (YAYBİR), also stated that digital publishing in Turkey is new and does not yet have precise rules. “In fact, this is the current debate of the sector right now. Several meetings are being held to determine the rules,” he said.

E-books a threat to the publishing sector?

Timaş Publishing House is also one of those publishers opting to wait for some time to watch what happens with e-books, though the firm has completed the work to offer some of their books in digital format. “We have a project to offer our books in digital format, but I think it will take some time before the system completely functions, for example, the introduction of other system providers to the market and the launch of more devices,” said Emine Eroğlu, the head of the publishing house, adding that the system will probably not completely function until 2011.

Eroğlu believes that e-books will be especially beneficial to publishers, allowing them to offer out-of-print books. “The publishing sector has seen an increase in the number of titles printed over the past 10 years. We have 2,500 titles, for instance, but only 1,000 of these can be found in bookstores. With e-books, all these books will be available to consumers,” she said. Similarly, some 40 percent of books in idefix’s database are also out of print, a fact that carries the promise of big commercial potential for the publishing sector with the help of e-books.

On the other hand, according to Sadi Kizir, the owner of leading online bookstore Kitapyurdu.com, for now e-books are a big threat for the publishing sector. “Unless copyright issues are settled in Turkey, nothing good can happen with e-books. It will be some kind of suicide for publishers to become involved in this operation,” said Kizir. Kizir, however, expects that digital books will improve rapidly and will become more popular after a resolution on copyright and book piracy issues.

But e-books are also deemed a solution to book piracy, which is still a significant problem for the Turkish publishing sector, estimated to be equal to approximately 50 percent of legal book sales. According to Kizir the reality is most likely to be exactly the opposite, unless, he repeated, copyright issues are resolved in Turkey. Even though idefix offers books in digital rights management (DRM) format, protecting these books from being copied and only allowing the e-book to be read from one device, Kizir still doubts that the system will work properly.

“The price of an e-book is around two-thirds the price of a printed one, but pirated books can even be found at a price of 20 percent less. So it can’t be cheaper,” he said.

Yet, book piracy depends not only on the high prices of books. It is a known fact that it is hard to find original books in most of Anatolia. In this regard, İnhan reckons that e-books will make access to books more convenient and contribute to the fight against piracy to an extent, though in order to overcome this problem completely other measures will be needed.

Is an e-book likely to be cheaper?

An e-book does not have printing or distribution costs, which means that people expect the price to be significantly lower than printed books. However, current e-books offered on idefix have only a discount rate of 20 to 30 percent, drawing harsh criticism from readers on the grounds that it is too high for an e-book, which cannot be lent to a friend or sold later on.

But İnhan said these levels are normal for the beginning, predicting prices of e-books to be discounted by 50 to 60 percent compared to printed copies with time “in line with the rules of competition.” However, he stressed that idefix will not enforce any policy concerning determining prices but will leave this decision entirely to publishers.