Aug 3, 2010 1:54 PM

Why Metadata Matters for the Future of E-Books

The world of digital publishing can be a lot more complicated than deciding whether to buy a Kindle, Nook, or iPad. If you want to know just how complex things are getting, just ask a publisher, author, or agent about Andrew Wylie. Along with Amazon announcing its new Kindle, the major — and I mean, […]

Along with Amazon announcing its new Kindle, the major -- and I mean, epoch-making -- news in digital publishing in these circles last week was when Wylie, a literary agent, finally made good on his threat to bypass publishers by inking a deal giving the exclusive e-book rights to his agency's backlist to Amazon, through his imprint called Odyssey Editions.

This means that books by Borges, Nabokov, Rushdie, Roth, Ellison, Updike, and Erdrich -- some of which had been unavailable in any electronic format -- are now available digitally, but only for the Kindle.

Wylie's move triggered retaliation from publishers, including Random House. It's the most serious skirmish in a longstanding industry-wide debate between publishers and authors' representatives over the proper royalty rate authors should receive for e-books, and (in some cases) who owns the rights to electronic versions of a book altogether.

Publishing professionals and the journalists who cover the industry approach electronic books fundamentally differently from technology journalists and enthusiasts. Just as technophiles' debates over open vs. closed systems or the relative value of different programming languages rarely filter down to the uninitiated, publishers' attention to agency vs wholesale models (and the dramatic power plays between agents, retailers, and publishers) can initially be confusing to folks not directly involved.

These are arguments readers rarely have the interest or need to pay attention to, until someone claiming the rights to a book (say, George Orwell's 1984) turns out not to have proper ownership of it, forcing Amazon to remotely remove the book from readers' machines. Or The legal and economic agreements girding the foundation of the publishing industry, including the sale and availability of e-books, turn out to be like the plumbing running through your house -- until there's a crisis, there isn't much need to pay attention to it.

I asked publishing professional Don Linn, who's worked as a book distributor and small press print publisher before starting a much-anticipated but short-lived digital only press called Quartet that closed operations last year, to expand on some points he made on his publishing and technology blog about what he called "L'affaire Wylie." What became clear is that even publishers, agents, and retailers, who've rightly been focused on signing writers and selling books, didn't appreciate how much the arcana of the business would matter in the move to digital platforms.

Publishing metadata, for instance -- things like ISBNs, trim size, etc. -- has traditionally been one of the dullest aspects of the business, useful for selling to retailers and libraries but not much else. Now, however, publishers are expanding their definition and uses of metadata, in order to make their titles easier to find in text searches. Readers don't care about metadata -- until they can or can't find the book they're looking for.

"Making a title discoverable in a world where hundreds of thousands of books are published each year is more critical than when only tens of thousands were being published," Don says. "Basically, if you do a poor job with your metadata, you're hosed." Metadata is good information management, but in a search-driven business, it's good marketing too.

There's also the even-thornier issue of rights and licensing: for instance, whether e-books count as a primary right (like the right to print and sell a book in a specific geographic area) or a subsidiary right (like a translation, or in some cases merchandizing).

Evan Schnittman of Bloomsbury Publishing wrote a terrific post delineating the specific kinds of rights and royalty rates assigned to each, arguing forcefully that e-books like those sold for the Kindle have to be considered a primary rather than a subsidiary right, since the work of editors, designers, marketers, etc., is the same for each; and most importantly, because the shared ecosystem of print and digital sales means that sale of an e-book typically substitutes for the sale of a printed book.

This may be one reason why innovation in e-books often takes the form of transmedia promotion of print books, like the popular and acclaimed "Cathy's Book" iPhone app (shown above). The app, in this case, is part of a broad network of objects, including the printed text(s) and web sites, positioning the book as part of an alternative reality game (ARG). But what about genuinely self-contained multimedia books, the long-promised synthesis of text, images, video, music, and interactivity that futurists have long-awaited? Are those rights identical to those of a plain-vanilla text e-book like those sold for the Kindle? What happens to them? Linn is wary:

The skill sets required to produce a first class enhanced title are simply not resident in publishing houses, nor are those most qualified to bring those skills to the party likely to choose book publishing as the most promising career path. Because of this, if I were an agent or author, I'd be very careful about which rights (therre's that word again) I licensed to book publishers unless and until the publisher can demonstrate that it can take full advantage of anything beyond print, digital and audio.

He added that the major e-book retailers were unlikely to do much to push for enhanced titles, or create them: "I could see Apple getting involved as a way to expand hardware sales in the education or business market, though they've shown no inclination to create content so far." Amazon and Barnes & Noble have been cool towards enhanced texts -- although Amazon does sell some enhanced ebooks in its Kindle store that, oddly, can't be read on the Kindle -- and are likely to follow the market, rather than lead, according to Linn.

What does this mean for the average reader, trying to bet on a platform or waiting for an immersive experience reading an enhanced version of Austerlitz or* House of Leaves*?

If exclusive ebook deals bypassing the publisher become the rule, some books you want simply won't be available for the hardware you have. And ultimately, your device's capabilities will be secondary to whether or not a rights holder has the technical skills and legal clearances to bring the product to market.

It may be a few years before the real future of the book is settled. And then, if history is any guide, only for a moment.

Screenshot of "Cathy's Book:" www.cathysbook.com

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