JISC national e-books observatory project

This year at the London Book Fair there was no end to the discussion on e-books in the trade and the academic markets. Sony was there discussing their ‘respect for the reading experience and the heritage of print’ and Waterstones, their chosen distributor, were supporting Sony in the need to be driven by  consumer habits.

A key theme that emerged from the event was speed. Sony expects the demand for reading devices to grow very quickly as the e-reading revolution takes off. Neil Jewesbury of Waterstones  agreed saying that there have been many sales of the Sony device across the UK, but highlighted that unless the publishing community acts fast, readers will hit a barrier in terms of the availability of book content.

I think this issue of speed is essential in the academic market, not just in terms of the right books being available, but in terms of the user reading experience. Currently, not only do libraries face complaints from students and academics who do not understand the reason why they can get electronic access to some books and not others, but they face complaints about the interface and experience of e-book platforms. Many users find that these interfaces are not intuitive and rather than making it easy for them to use, restrict use to a frustrating level. There is of course the factor of DRM in this, but essentially, if we do not act with speed and improve the availability of content and the user experience, the level of convenience that users require and expect will not be met and this could impact on the rate of take-up.

This is certainly something that the JISC national e-books observatory project is tackling and we will be providing feedback to e-book providers about user experiences of using e-book platforms. The important point is that we must all move with haste, users like e-books for their convenience and online access, they want simplicity and they want it fast. They dip in and out very quickly, they go to get what they need for their courses and then leave. If we don’t meet consumer demand, we run the risk of fostering the attitude of “screw that! I know where I can get the whole book” as one student said in our focus groups.

JISC Collections will be disseminating the results of the project in June 2009 and we are looking forward to working in collaboration with publishers and e-book aggregators to help speed along the development of the e-textbook market in line with user habbits and expectations.

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