Publishing houses, ignoring warned risks, are rushing to trade e-books, believing that in the long term, e-books would bring the revenue much higher than normal books, because e-books are 50 percent cheaper than paper books, while they do not have to worry about inventory.
Publishing houses, ignoring warned risks, are rushing to trade e-books, believing that in the long term, e-books would bring the revenue much higher than normal books, because e-books are 50 percent cheaper than paper books, while they do not have to worry about inventory.
The market with great potentials
E-book trading is considered a new and risky business field in Vietnam. It is risky because traders can foresee that their books will have to compete with un-copyrighted books abundant on Internet.
However, despite the risks, a lot of enterprises have jumped into the e-book trade. Lac Viet, Tri Viet and Vinabook have become the well known suppliers of e-books which have been distributing products in a large scale.
According to Tri Viet (First News), in the first quarter of 2011, the company signed a one-year contract worth 23,000 dollars with Samsung Vina on the sale of the digital content of 50 out of the 170 books belonging to its “Hat giong tam hon” (soul seeds) collection. The content will be integrated by Samsung Vina on smart mobile phones or smart TVs.
Prior to that, Lac Viet Informatics Company joined forces with the Vietnam Writers’ Association to digitalize nearly 5000 books. Lac Viet has developed an e-book format of its own and Lac Viet-Reader which allows to minimize the content piracy and allows readers to easily search pages and information on their demand.
With the facilities, the publications digitalized by Lac Viet prove to have more advantages than paper publications.
Ha Than, General Director of Lac Viet, believes that Lac Viet has followed the right direction in the digital age when making investment in e-books. He said that he can see positive signals for the new type of books, while mobile phone firms Samsung and LG have agreed to sell the books provided by Lac Viet.
Sources said that besides the intermediary enterprises, some domestic publishing houses are drawing up their own plans to develop e-books.
More copyrighted books needed
Than from Lac Viet said that e-books are clearly a reasonable solution in the context of the economic difficulties. Publishing houses will not have to spend money on papers, ink and printing, while the costs have been escalating. Meanwhile, with e-books, publishing houses do not have to worry about the inventory which may cause big wastes to them. Especially, the business potentials prove to be greater, because no boundary would be set up for e-books.
However, Than has admitted that copyright remains the biggest headache for now. E-book suppliers now not only have to struggle with un-copyrighted books which can be easily found on Internet, but also meet difficulties in negotiating with authors, publishing houses and enterprises.
The copyright disputes may occur regularly among the involved party, which explains why many publishing houses remain hesitant in implementing their e-book projects.
The copyright has also caused a headache to the enterprises which provide terminal devices. Luu Duy Hoai, Marketing Director of maydocsach.com, said that e-book market really has great potentials, but big difficulties still exist.
Maydocsach.vn has joined the market for one year. It sells about 200-300 machines that support the e-book reading a month, even though the sale prices are not low. The enterprise plans to import Kindle, Nook, iPad by the end of the year to serve clients.
Enterprises can only purchase the copyright of a small amount of books available on the market, while they still have to rely on un-copyrighted books. Besides, due to the lack of connection, there has been no big enterprise which comes forward and manages the big volume of copyrighted books.
“International companies such as Amazon have the volume of copyrighted books even bigger than paper books. Though Amazon also sells terminal devices for e-books, the main source of income still comes from selling books,” he said.
This shows that the revenue from e-books could be very high, while domestic enterprises still cannot take full advantage of e-books.
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E-book trading is considered a new and risky business field in Vietnam. It is risky because traders can foresee that their books will have to compete with un-copyrighted books abundant on Internet.
However, despite the risks, a lot of enterprises have jumped into the e-book trade. Lac Viet, Tri Viet and Vinabook have become the well known suppliers of e-books which have been distributing products in a large scale.
According to Tri Viet (First News), in the first quarter of 2011, the company signed a one-year contract worth 23,000 dollars with Samsung Vina on the sale of the digital content of 50 out of the 170 books belonging to its “Hat giong tam hon” (soul seeds) collection. The content will be integrated by Samsung Vina on smart mobile phones or smart TVs.
Prior to that, Lac Viet Informatics Company joined forces with the Vietnam Writers’ Association to digitalize nearly 5000 books. Lac Viet has developed an e-book format of its own and Lac Viet-Reader which allows to minimize the content piracy and allows readers to easily search pages and information on their demand.
With the facilities, the publications digitalized by Lac Viet prove to have more advantages than paper publications.
Ha Than, General Director of Lac Viet, believes that Lac Viet has followed the right direction in the digital age when making investment in e-books. He said that he can see positive signals for the new type of books, while mobile phone firms Samsung and LG have agreed to sell the books provided by Lac Viet.
Sources said that besides the intermediary enterprises, some domestic publishing houses are drawing up their own plans to develop e-books.
More copyrighted books needed
Than from Lac Viet said that e-books are clearly a reasonable solution in the context of the economic difficulties. Publishing houses will not have to spend money on papers, ink and printing, while the costs have been escalating. Meanwhile, with e-books, publishing houses do not have to worry about the inventory which may cause big wastes to them. Especially, the business potentials prove to be greater, because no boundary would be set up for e-books.
However, Than has admitted that copyright remains the biggest headache for now. E-book suppliers now not only have to struggle with un-copyrighted books which can be easily found on Internet, but also meet difficulties in negotiating with authors, publishing houses and enterprises.
The copyright disputes may occur regularly among the involved party, which explains why many publishing houses remain hesitant in implementing their e-book projects.
The copyright has also caused a headache to the enterprises which provide terminal devices. Luu Duy Hoai, Marketing Director of maydocsach.com, said that e-book market really has great potentials, but big difficulties still exist.
Maydocsach.vn has joined the market for one year. It sells about 200-300 machines that support the e-book reading a month, even though the sale prices are not low. The enterprise plans to import Kindle, Nook, iPad by the end of the year to serve clients.
Enterprises can only purchase the copyright of a small amount of books available on the market, while they still have to rely on un-copyrighted books. Besides, due to the lack of connection, there has been no big enterprise which comes forward and manages the big volume of copyrighted books.
“International companies such as Amazon have the volume of copyrighted books even bigger than paper books. Though Amazon also sells terminal devices for e-books, the main source of income still comes from selling books,” he said.
This shows that the revenue from e-books could be very high, while domestic enterprises still cannot take full advantage of e-books.
(Source: Vietnamnet)
