CSS (Cascading Stylesheets) is the visual language to HTML’s data structures. CSS is very easy to learn because there are limited commands and the changes can be viewed immediately. However, it can be a very difficult concept to master as there is much more to it than meets the eye.

Inline, Inline-block, and Block

All rendered (visible on the page) HTML elements are one of the following display types: inline, inline-block, or block. Each has its use and understanding the differences can save you a great amount of headache when trying to position and style elements.

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The clout these players have is undeniable; although unlike the way things were a few years ago, they are no longer alone. We in the West are aware of the remarkable performance of the South Korean Samsung – which occupies the number one position in cell phone sales worldwide –, but we tend not to have heard of countless Chinese platforms and manufacturers that sometimes outsell their American and European competitors.

Let’s look for example at the Alibaba Group. Thanks to its Tmall and Taobao business units, in the first 11 months of 2012 this e-commerce company, founded in Hangzhou in 1999, recorded sales worth $157 billion dollars, more than Amazon and EBay combined. According to Jack Ma, the legendary founder and former CEO of Alibaba, the company’s sales volume could exceed the total for all American e-commerce companies in 2013.

What is the strategy of these Chinese behemoths? How do they compete with their Western counterparts, particularly those from America? What impact might they have on the Web as we know it?

Eagles versus dragons

In an inspiring article published in Asia Times, Brett Daniel Shehadey describes the personalities of the United States and China on the basis of their respective national symbols: the eagle and the dragon.

The eagle’s strength lies in its razor-sharp vision, its capacity for flight and its nest, which proves inaccessible to its opponent. The eagle is proud, it knows what it wants, but if it were forced to walk on the ground, it would find itself in grave danger.

The dragon incarnates very different virtues. It moves secretively, as though invisible, and gives no hint as to what its next movement will be. This creature of ancient wisdom is able to imitate other animals – it can both fly and walk, only to then disappear. It is confident of its own superiority but does not show it, for fear of envy. The greatest danger for the dragon lies in overexposure: if it shows itself too much, its rivals will distrust it and try to attack it at various points simultaneously.

This play on images is used by Shehadey to analyze geopolitical issues, but – as we will try to do here – it can also be applied to the digital sphere.

Nests and clouds

In general, American Internet companies devote themselves to first building brands in their domestic market; they then export their products and services without any major modifications. The overarching trend in the sector is towards cloud computing: in keeping with the eagle’s style, this involves building impregnable “nests”, which form the center of an entire ecosystem of devices, applications and messages that can be controlled remotely.

While standardization and cloud computing provide the eagle with undeniable advantages – speed of reaction, simplification of processes –, they also involve risks. Firstly, American Web companies often underestimate local contexts – the cultural, political and regulatory specificities of each market –, which might help explain the difficulties encountered by Apple in Brazil and Mexico, and Amazon in India, for example. In addition, the centralization of data necessarily implies greater vulnerability for users: the possibility of the US authorities carrying out surveillance of cloud data has thus provoked heated controversy.

The dragon and the power of the invisible

With sustained economic growth for over three decades and the consequent migration of millions of inhabitants from rural to urban areas, China has concentrated on modernizing both its transport and communications infrastructure. As is well known, the State exerts iron-fisted control over search engines and social networks. Nevertheless, the regulations have not prevented the emergence of extraordinarily dynamic Internet companies. Platforms such as Sina Weibo, Renren, Tencent, and Douban, among numerous others, are taking advantage of a domestic market of 564 million Internet users and offering increasingly sophisticated services.

Unlike the eagle, the dragon adapts itself flexibly to the most diverse circumstances. Tencent’s WeChat service, for instance, is expanding into markets as dissimilar as India, Malaysia, Mexico and Argentina. The performance of hardware manufacturers and ICT providers is equally spectacular, to the extent that a firm like Huawei already earns 66% of its revenue from outside of China. Countless Chinese technology companies are venturing into Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe and even the Unites States, with a recurrent strategy that combines the cloud with “ground-based” advances: 1) enter a new market discreetly; 2) go into partnership with home-grown companies; 3) wherever possible, offer localized products.

In the kingdom of the dragon, eagles do not fly

On account of its number of users, China constitutes the most attractive digital market in the world. However, few foreign companies have been able to maintain a secure position there due to the fact that, by applying a complex digital “kung fu”, the local giants compete ruthlessly and the Chinese State imposes harsh conditions.

In early 2010, Google decided to withdraw its search engine from mainland China, following repeated clashes with the government. Although Google was already losing market share to its rival Baidu prior to the conflict, it ended up turning the whole episode into a political event after it compared the Chinese system of government to Soviet totalitarianism. At that same time the dizzying expansion of the mobile phone market was just getting underway, which meant that the departure from mainland China had extremely negative consequences for Google: the Chinese cell phones that now run on Android usually lack Google services. Aware of its mistake, it didn’t take the company from Mountain View long to make a pragmatic change of direction: it resolved to return to China in 2012.

Google’s conflicts in China are not just related to the government, but also to the big local private players. In September 2012, the Taiwanese manufacturer Acer – which uses Android for 90% of the devices it produces – suddenly cancelled a press conference at which, alongside the Alibaba Group, it was planning to unveil a smartphone that ran the Aliyun operating system, based not on Android but on Linux. According to Alibaba, Google had apparently threatened to terminate Acer’s licensing agreements for Android, which forced the manufacturer to postpone the joint project. The giant Alibaba will more than likely keep up the fight.

For Apple, China represents a vital destination. However, over there the company from Cupertino is a minor player whose market share is shrinking due to competitive pressure from Samsung and local manufacturers like Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi or ZTE. An alliance with China Mobile – the main telephone operator – will enable Apple to increase its presence in the Middle Kingdom, albeit at a very high price: China Mobile is demanding that Apple share revenue from the AppStore, something the US company has never granted to any other operator in the world. Another option for Apple would be to manufacture low-cost phones, but that could also do irreversible damage to the brand.

Several rumor-filled months went by before Amazon managed to present the Kindle in China. The delay was put down largely to the difficulties undergone by the company with regard to setting up its cloud – a key component in the functioning of Kindle devices. In December 2012, Amazon finally opened its Kindle store – selling only e-books, like in Brazil –, but the headaches were just beginning: the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAAP) deemed that Amazon did not have a proper license for selling e-books. Even if Amazon manages to normalize the situation, it will have to face cut-throat competition from Chinese e-book companies like Shanda, Hanvon and Alibaba itself. After eight years of local presence, Amazon’s business still does not account for more than 1% of Chinese e-commerce.

Conquering the Web without firing a single shot

The Chinese giants have already made international inroads, particularly in emerging regions, but not all of them are in a hurry to conquer Western markets. They still have some fine-tuning to do domestically, and too aggressive an expansion would lead to strong resistance, as happened to Huawei in the US.

(CC) Flickr/antonwhoa

Faithful to their style, the titans from the kingdom of the dragon will probably continue to keep a low profile, leaving it up to their foreign counterparts to dominate the headlines. Many Chinese companies sense that the global financial crisis might make Western companies – many of which are over-expanded – turn to them in search of fresh funding, along the lines of what happened with Yahoo! and Alibaba in September 2012. If it succeeds in imposing its style, the dragon will one day be able to buy up all its rivals and thus shape the electronic universe as it sees fit.

In such case, we would perhaps see a shift from the relatively unitary Web we have today, to a set of less inter-connected intranets: a Web that would be impassable for the eagle, but easily accessed by the dragon. This could have huge consequences on all areas of electronic life.

Some Western companies already accept the new status quo and – like Apple – ostensibly play by the rules. Other eagles, seeking free and open skies in which to soar unhindered, will have no other alternative than confrontation. In that case, the dragon will perhaps choose to resist the blows, knowing full well that – unless some unexpected disruption occurs – time will play to its advantage.

1. Could you briefly speak about your professional path as well as the editorial angle of Trilce?

I am co-founder and Director of Trilce. Before founding Trilce in 1985, I worked for several years in the book distribution sector in France. Trilce has published thousands of titles and is part of the independent publishers’ movement since the end of the 1990s.

As Director, I participated in various initiatives in this regard – amongst others: the Editores Independientes group, the Intercultural Library, as well as The International Alliance of Independent Publishers. I am also deputy director at the Uruguayan Chamber of Book. Trilce is a publishing company focused on social sciences and youth literature.

2. Thanks to the Ceibal Plan, Uruguay was one of the most active Latin-American countries in terms of reducing the digital divide. What can you report on this initiative, both positive and negative aspects, five years after its implementation?

Quite honestly, five years is not a sufficient period of time to draw definite conclusions in the field of education. Without a doubt, the fact that all public school children now own an XO – a laptop specifically designed for this purpose – will have critical repercussions on their relation to this tool, as the child will develop skills – and also bad habits – implicit to its usage. Reading and writing habits will inevitably change, as will develop new ways of reasoning and communicating.

Recent research mainly focuses on outcomes related to the children’s social integration and their families, but addresses effects on education to a lesser extent. In fact, families who had until then no computer now have one – with high connectivity, enabling integration, communication with family and friends, access to information, management of administrative issues, etc. Regarding education as such, we noticed that there is little class material available and that the initiation of teachers to the XO device was difficult – the system was introduced without their input, which means there is a lot to improve in the future.

3. The Uruguayan Government recently discussed with publishing companies to include youth literature in the Plan’s computers. Does this constitute an interesting opportunity for Uruguayan publishing companies?

Generally speaking, when a State buys books, it meets the demands of libraries and education centres, but it also stimulates research and creation. Unfortunately, the Uruguayan State does not allocate any budget to book purchases except in some rare instances, on exceptional occasions, and with very limited print run. Libraries are in a disastrous state and their funds are replenished through donations.

National education launched a very interesting youth literature “mini-libraries” project designed for 2,400 schools, with a selection of 90 titles. These mini-libraries ended up providing some 300 schools with only 50 titles, reason being a “lack of funds”. The underlying argument is that these books could be replaced by digital books. Indeed, before the State acquired the 300 copies, the Ceibal Plan – which does not rely on national education – had planned to purchase these 90 digital titles with its own funds. The Plan wanted to mainstream them into its platform so children could download them over a limited period, without being able to print or copy them.

Without getting into the debate on differences, benefits and inconveniences of the traditional book and the e-book, we can state that currently, and this is particularly true for youth literature, they are not interchangeable: the access to one must be completed by the access to the other. Publishers and the Ceibal Plan considered from the beginning that this Book Chest – it is the name of the Ceibal Plan website – represented a first step and that solutions would need to be found along the way for e-books acquisition in the future.

In Uruguay, there is no e-book national sales platform. The few titles that one finds on Libranda cannot be purchased in the country; on Amazon, books published in Uruguay can be counted on one hand; Uruguayan publishing companies do not sell e-books on their website; the sales figures of e-reader are almost non-existent, and it is only during the last few months that the sale of e-readers really took off. In short, the e-book market in Uruguay is non-existent, such that the purchase done in the context of the Ceibal Plan was speaking of a “nil experience”, for both purchasers and publishers. The issues mainly came from two areas: a) technological and b) economic.

a) Publishers provided PDF files and the Ceibal Plan had to find an adequate format compatible with XO – the specific screen size, coding process, file’s weight, usage period, etc. all had to be taken into account. Not without difficulties, some solutions were eventually found: by modifying the books format to adapt it to smaller monitors, we maintained the PDF files format and created an application exclusively for the XO, enabling the decryption of books once downloaded. This application was valid for three years; beyond this time period, the system deleted books from the computer. The operation caused texts to “shift”, incorrect paragraph layouts, illustrations in wrong places, and other problems that could have been easily avoided but, because of the lack of experience of the people responsible of conversion, created a lot of back and forth.

One must also bear in mind that these e-books are sub-products of traditional publishing that were not created to undergo an eventual conversion to the electronic format. Now, we know that when doing traditional publishing, we must bear in mind a potential transition to the electronic format, and we have learned to use relevant resources in the layout programmes. Currently, some of these books are available on the website, others are being created.

b) From the economic viewpoint, two interrelated issues came up: how can we determine the price of each e-book, and what would be the copyright percentage?

We have noticed that a rights transfer giving potential access to more than 400,000 computers was practically an innovation in the world of Spanish-speaking publishing. We therefore had no precedent on which to base our project. We have observed that the e-books prices already on the market – those that are sub-products of traditional publishing – were determined according to the market and not manufacturing costs, and that they vary from one country to the other and also from one day to the next. We have discarded the idea of a price determined by the number of users, as the Ceibal Plan did not allow us to monitor access, and the idea of calculating based on the quantity of XO distributed.

Finally, following a “negotiation” in order to align Ceibal Plan’s budget to the amount proposed by publishers, we agreed on a price. The parastatal organisation required that the price be the same for all titles, regardless of author, inclusion of illustrations or not, length, etc. Given the educative and social character of the project, publishers compromised some of their requirements to support the Ceibal Plan.

Regarding the authors’ rights, many publishing companies had some articles in their contracts providing for copyrights in the digital field, in some cases with the same copyright percentage as traditional books, and in other few cases, with a higher percentage. Others had to negotiate with their authors. Generally speaking, we agreed on a percentage of 25% for global sales. Many had reviewed their contract to increase this figure, others signed new contracts, and others did not reach an agreement and did not sell their books. We must also point out that some authors met to discuss and defend their rights, opening an on-going debate to this day.

4. You have acquired a vast experience of fairs and publishing debates in the region: what long-term future do you foresee for e-books in Latin-America – or e-publishing in general? What challenges? What opportunities?

There is no doubt that the e-book is a technological advancement that, in some sectors, will develop endlessly, reaching a point of no return. In other sectors, the current trend – encouraged by commercial interests not linked to the content but to the industry of e-reading devices, auxiliary items and online advertising – will adapt to reading habits currently undergoing transformation. There will be cohabitation, adjusting to these habits. It is very difficult to foresee changes to come. But there won’t be less reading or writing. It is also challenging to foresee new technological development that could transform e-books – electronic ink hybrid monitors and LCD, for instance.

The challenges: learning new technologies without neglecting those used today; continuing to prioritise contents; avoiding falling into the hands of centralising monopolies; creating decentralising alliances; not selling the cultural role and symbolic value of the book cheaply.

Opportunities: specialising in what we are currently doing; improving the non-digital book; strengthening our professionalism; optimising resources for promotion.

Until the e-book phenomenon grows further and finds its place, we shall defend the traditional book instrument, which already proved itself on many levels, and democratise its access and make it reach a greater diffusion, thus promoting bibliodiversity.

Tip Level of Difficulty: Basic

This article is targeted at beginners but anyone who uses HTML can benefit from the concepts outlined.

Defining our terms

XML: eXtendable Markup Language. XML is a structured way of storing data by usingtags. A tag is simply a name wrapped in < >. <book> would be a book tag, <title> would be a title tag.

HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML is a specific and well defined XML structure. To summarize, it is a list of specific tags and their expected meaning.

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1) The Indian government recently launched the latest model of the Aakash-2, and the figures are astonishing (220 million tablets in the next 5 years). What are the advantages of the project, in your opinion?

It is undoubtedly an ambitious project. If implemented well, it has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of educational content in the country. It would also give access to digital natives (and there are many inIndia) and lead to their participation in the production and consumption of technology-driven content.

2) What about the challenges?

There are many challenges, especially to government-initiated projects of this scale. Apart from the deep-rooted corruption that gets in the way of effective project implementation, many of these tech-heavy projects are personality-driven. So, if the person who started it is out of office, the project is liable to crumble.

But we have precedence to guide us: the C-DOT project, which brought telecommunications across India in a short time, since it was established in 1984. Telephones reached almost every village within a decade. It is the groundwork of C-DOT that all present ICT4D projects have benefitted from in the country.

With regard to the device itself: it remains to be seen how many of the technology and battery problems spotted in Aakash-1 have been resolved in Aakash-2.

Most importantly, since its primary use is for classroom learning activities, the technology-driven pedagogical approach will determine its success. Now, this is a challenge, since basic connectivity to higher education in non-urban areas remains a dream: right from the presence of institutions, to transport links, to internet hubs, to teachers who are tech-savvy. Aakash-2 seems to be aware of this and has begun by using the device to train teachers of engineering colleges.

My bigger worry would be that students from science and technology disciplines will get priority over arts and humanities students, as in the case of all educational resources in India, and by the time the device trickles down to them, we will have lost a lot of time.

Coming to the most important challenge: device readiness for content in Indian-languages. I am not sure yet how prepared the device is to host language content. But we should wait for it to be reviewed from this standpoint.

You’ll find many Indians in the education and content development space quite skeptical whenever the government launches such glamorous initiatives, because almost always implementation will be challenging. Techies might review it for its tech qualities, but its real test will lie in how much and how soon it will reach the intended audience.

It is important to remember that in the case of Aakash, the government is not directly involved. It has given this responsibility to a national autonomous institution—first IIT Rajasthan and now IIT Mumbai. Datawind is the company that will sub-contract the manufacturing of the devices.

3) With its advantages and drawbacks, the Aakash is without doubt a big leap forward in terms of spreading digital reading. Do you think Indian publishers are making an effort to keep up with the electronic age? What would be your advice to them?

Indian publishers want to make an effort; there is no doubt about it. They see the value in the new means for content delivery, and they are also fully aware of its market potential. Keeping up with the electronic age is challenging because of the investments needed by smaller publishers to “go digital”. Not only does it seem confusing, but the convergence of media and rapid changes make it difficult for them to grasp and discern what needs to be done.

Publishers here will invariably follow the trends set by the multinational companies whose Indian subsidiaries will have access to the technology developed in the West, and will implement it here. My observation is that the process of thinking “ground-up” is missing. The digital pathway is becoming imitative rather than innovative.

My advice would be to create solutions for local realities, keeping in mind the geographical and cultural diversity. But first they should educate themselves and make themselves aware of the options available to them. For example, an expensive software solution may not be the answer, while a simple XML enabled design file is all that is needed to achieve basic entryway into the digital world. They should also understand the relationship between the devices available and the content and what kind of content works best with what sort of device.

4) Many big international players such as Amazon have been making their own incursions into India in recent months. However, last September, the Indian government established some regulations regarding foreign online companies. What happened exactly? Do you think this might become an obstacle for those global players?

Technically speaking, the Indian government did not establish strict regulations now. The retail sector in India had been closed to any foreign direct investment until the government liberalized the sector in September. The Indian retail brands that have been established by big Indian corporations were a powerful lobby in making this happen. Amazon and Walmart have also been trying their best to lobby for deregulation of these laws.

Perhaps it is because of the stiff opposition from many quarters that the Government has allowed just a percentage of investment from foreign companies for multi-brand retail only. So, now the foreign investors who want to engage in multi-brand retail, such as Walmart and Amazon would need to enter into a joint venture with an Indian partner. Walmart has done this with Bharti. Amazon does not seem to want to join hands with anybody. This, plus the rule that such entities cannot engage in e-commerce, completely kills Amazon’s chances of setting up business, because e-commerce is their business model. It is certain that the government will deregulate over the coming years. But, for now, Amazon cannot establish itself in India. It will have to continue supporting Junglee, which is an online aggregator, but not a direct seller.

Whether this is an obstacle depends on the point of view. I believe that such large-scale changes are best made in phases, keeping the country’s health in mind, instead of under pressure from powerful lobbies. So, I would prefer global players to be inconvenienced, if it means that the Indian public gets the chance to adapt to these changes. The Bharti-Walmart JV company is already under the scanner for alleged violations of the FDI norms.

5) India has become a global software hub. But apart from providing IT services, one would normally expect India to become an international power in terms of content, hardware and other aspects of the digital publishing ecosystem. What is your impression of this? What place should India aspire to occupy in the long term?

The unfortunate reality is that, although India is known for IT and IT-Enabled Services, it is not known as a content producer. We are still importing a lot of our content (I mean in the English language of course), and as such we are looked at by foreign publishers as a market of consumers, not producers. India would need to produce good quality content that can find a market internationally, for it to hope for a place in the global digital-publishing ecosystem.

1. Please tell me more about your background and about ABBYY

I studied at the Russian State University for the Humanities and graduated in artificial intelligence – a specialization that combines two areas of knowledge: software programming and linguistics. Over the past 10 years I have been employed by several Russian software and hi-tech companies. At the moment, I work as a business development manager for Latin America at ABBYY – an international leading developer of document recognition, data capture and linguistics technologies.

ABBYY’s products include end-user applications for document recognition and conversion (FineReader and PDF Transformer), data capture programs for processing forms, semi-structured and unstructured documents (FlexiCapture and FormReader), SDKs that provide a full spectrum of ABBYY’s recognition technologies, the Lingvo line of electronic dictionaries and a range of other linguistic products and solutions. The company is one of the largest scientific global research centers for developing artificial intelligence technologies in linguistics and document recognition. ABBYY also owns a publishing house, ABBYY Press, and a linguistic solutions agency, ABBYY Language Services.

2. Which are the main players in digital publishing in Russia?

The digital publishing market in Russia is relatively young and still developing. The demand for digital content is growing and, according to the estimations of experts, sales of electronic books double every year.

I think there is a general understanding of the fact that the market is changing and the development of information technologies is clearly in the air, which impels large publishing houses and middle-sized companies to launch digital projects and work on digital strategies.

To me, it looks like the electronic publications market is now made up of significant publishers, who are launching new and expanding existing digital projects (Eksmo, Prosvescheniye, Drofa, AST Press), and major digital book distributors (LitRes, Wexler, Ozon). From certain points of view, ABBYY may also be considered as this type of company and is involved in digital publishing industry in various aspects.

3. What is the general attitude among publishers towards the digital age?

The publishing industry is traditionally conservative, however, with the arrival of an era of total informatization, it also has to adapt to contemporary tendencies. I think that, overall, publishing companies in Russia understand that this is a time of significant transformation and that the way in which content is provided to readers has changed. The market leaders are already developing actively in the digital sphere, but I would say that most are still at the stage of considering different ways to enter the digital arena.

One of the key issues is that the preparation of quality electronic publications requires resources and financial investment. The development process includes many stages: technical requirements, content revision and restructuring, interface design, programming, testing, etc. Moreover, the variety of platforms (Windows, Mac OS, Android, iOS etc.) means technical adaptations are needed, which in some cases double the costs. Clearly, emerging publishing tools help to ease this process, however their implementation also requires that resources are put into learning how to use them. In addition, development of the digital product alone is usually not enough, as the publication process also includes the digital distribution aspect, which is also a labor-intensive task. It includes day-to-day work such as promotion, dealing with customer reviews, technical updates, and dynamic analysis of sales results, pricing policy and the effectiveness of distribution channels.

As a result, publishers either have to face the need to change the business processes within the company and create their own software development and sales departments, or else find a reliable partner in a technological area who will cover this part of the process.

In Russia, the leading publishers are now trying both ways (for example, AST Press and Drofa both work with partners in some areas while at the same time developing their own digital projects).

However, for the moment, the most winning solution lies in mutual cooperation between publishing houses and software companies who offer partnerships in the creation of electronic products, such as, for example, ABBYY, as well as companies who have expertise in the digital distribution of content (such as LitRes – 54% –, Wexler, Ozon, and ABBYY too).

4. Could you say that digital is increasing its presence among readers?

Yes, of course. People in Russia are getting more and more used to reading on portable devices.

According to the SmartMarketing analysis, the overall volume of ebook readers sales in Russia has grown 3 times in comparison to 2010. Analysts refer to this market as one which has already passed through the youthful phase and has achieved stable growth.

Interesting results were obtained by the RBC (Russian Business Consulting) portal team. According to their survey, 53.1% of the portal audience (mostly made up of young and business people) use e-readers to read books.

The most popular brands among e-readers are PocketBook, Sony, Wexler, Onyx. However, according to various estimations, the most popular way of reading electronic content in Russia is still on PCs and mobile devices (smartphones). On the other hand, sales of tablets are growing as well, and the experts suppose that in the future ebook readers will be replaced by their multi-functional versions.

The general opinion currently is that electronic publications should help to develop the reading culture in Russia, by making content more easily accessible and affordable not only for the citizens of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg but also for people in the distant regions of Russia, such as, for example, Siberia and the far east of the country.

5. Piracy comes up over and over again in debates on digital publishing. How do you see this phenomenon in Russia?

Piracy is certainly one of the most critical issues in Russia, as it is in many other countries in the world.

In Russia, the electronic books market is growing rapidly but only 1 in 10 electronic books is downloaded legally. The publishing houses lose millions of dollars every year because of the huge number of illegal downloads.

At the same time, because of insufficient legal policy in relation to electronic publishing, there are a lot of illegal players in the Russian market. Among the major providers of legal content are: LitRes, Elkniga, Bookee and others.

The Russian law against online piracy on one hand is relatively strict and implies individual responsibility. However, its application in practice is more complicated and large stores and publishers sometimes have to deal with illegal publications on their own: there are cases when they agree to make illegal resources legal.

In my opinion, the problem of piracy might be partially solved not solely by improving protection systems, but probably also by providing good quality content at affordable prices. It is common knowledge that the pirated books found online often include mistakes, junk symbols, etc. So at some point, for the users it may just be easier to buy a legal book from a trustworthy provider, if the price is not too high.

For the purpose of comparison, in the West the price of an electronic book may be around 10-15 USD, while in Russia it is around 3 USD.

Another expert opinion about piracy is that, at present, the Russian publishing industry does not provide enough legal content for readers. For example, LitRes has around 50, 000 titles, while one of the major Russian illegal online libraries, Lib.rus.ec, has around 200, 000 titles (this and some other subjects are described in more details in the article by Vladimir Kharitonov on Russian Publishing “Steps into the Digital Future”).

6. What will be the impact of e-books and other digital tools in Russia? Do you see any particular opportunity? Any big challenge?

I think that the development of the e-book industry will first of all provide the different layers of the Russian population in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and the regions with an opportunity to read more. Through the spreading of the Internet, the distant regions of the country will be given access to the same type and amount of books as the central regions, which will support and develop the reading culture in the whole country and increase the general level of education. It is hard to find a variety of interesting books in print, but in electronic form they may be accessed and downloaded easily from any place. Students are already actively using this opportunity.

In addition, the subject of electronic educational materials is being actively discussed in the Russian education industry. If these discussions take the form of a government project, then most likely such a project will receive funding, which will also be helpful for the growth of the publishing business in Russia.

Among the main challenges for the development of the e-book market in Russia is establishing clear business models for the sale of content. At the present moment, there are 3 general variants: sales of e-books as files, the subscription model and multimedia applications. However, the purchasing processes are a bit more complicated than, for example, in the USA, as the infrastructure based on the connection of e-reader devices and digital stores is still at the stage of active development. Examples within the Russian market in this case might be PocketBook or LitRes.

Another issue is that, on the one hand, the Russian public is not really used to the idea of purchasing legal content as is the case, for example, in the USA, and on the other hand, online payment methods (such as credit cards, for instance) have also only become common in recent years. This leads, then, to the problem of piracy in combination with technical payment processing difficulties.

With its 11 million inhabitants –20 million, if we include the suburbs– and a GDP of over 300 billion dollars, São Paulo is South America’s main industrial and financial hub. Some 6 million vehicles travel its gigantic network of highways, avenues, tunnels and viaducts. Away from the traffic, countless passengers are transported underground by different subway lines, while up in the air a swarm of helicopters wait to land on the rooftop of one skyscraper or another.

The city exudes an extraordinary intensity; it is thoroughly multicultural and absorbs any outside influence –customs, dress, food and even words– just as naturally as a rainforest assimilates new species. However, such ease should not give rise to confusion: far from passively adapting to fashion trends, São Paulo transforms them to its advantage, which perhaps explains the Latin motto that adorns its flag: non ducor, duco –“I am not led, I lead”.

CONTEC: education and technology

Luckily, the city is endowed with a number of tranquil spaces. Ibirapuera Park is one of São Paulo’s largest, and offers beautiful lakes, fountains and trees, as well as a rich cultural program. In its centre stands the Ibirapuera auditorium, designed several decades ago by the brilliant architect Oscar Niemeyer and currently run by the Itaú Cultural Institute.

The auditorium is generally used for large-scale musical shows, but from the 7th to the 8th of August it served as the venue for CONTEC, an international conference on education and technology organized by the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) –particularly by LitCam and Frankfurt Academy divisions–, which enjoyed the support of local actors including PublishNews, Abeu, the Itaú Cultural Institute, the Brazilian Book Chamber (CBL) and Positivo. Nearly 700 people, most of them youngsters, were able to attend cutting-edge debates on the issue of illiteracy, Brazil’s national reading plans, the initiatives undertaken by local companies and the incursions being made by multinationals.

Judging from what we have seen, Brazil is getting ready to take a giant leap in both education and technology. As Karine Pansa –CBL’s director– clearly stated at the opening of the event, Brazil is still an unequal country, but the universalization of primary education, investment in educational quality and new technologies will prove to be decisive factors in consolidating the reading market. To achieve these objectives, the country “will have to learn from those nations that have already taken that leap”.

A powerful state

André Lázaro –who served as Secretary of Continued Education, Literacy and Diversity during Lula da Silva’s presidency– listed the accomplishments and challenges of the national plans to combat illiteracy, as well as the need to work actively in this sphere in order to achieve a better democracy. As Lázaro reminded us, pronounced differences still persist between the affluent South East and the poorer North East, as well as between urban and rural areas.

Lucia Couto –the current General Coordinator of Elementary Education at the Ministry of Education– described the different tools used by the state to universalize child literacy. Brazil is currently discussing the details of the National Education Plan, which could see investment in education rise to 10% of GDP over the next 10 years.

Public sector efforts have also emerged from the field of culture. Galeno Amorim –the president of the National Library Foundation– presented details of the National Book and Reading Plan. As the public official pointed out, the Ministry of Culture has earmarked almost 200 million dollars for various initiatives to bolster libraries and promote reading during 2012.

Brazil at the technological forefront

If the public sector is showing signs of decisive action, private companies are not far behind, although they are aware of just how much remains to be done. Claudio de Moura Castro –an advisor to the powerful group Positivo–, pointed out that scarcely 18% of university students are in the habit of reading and that a significant number of pupils are actually functionally illiterate. The fact is there are as many bookshops in the city of Paris as there are in the whole of Brazil.

The mathematician José Luís Poli –from the Mother-Tongue Literacy Program (PALMA), developed by the company IES2– concurred with the negative assessment regarding the millions of Brazilians who are either fully or functionally illiterate, but showed himself to be optimistic about the solutions provided by new technologies. PALMA functions as a set of applications for mobile phones and offers different writing and text comprehension tools. It is important to remember that in Brazil there are over 250 million cell phones –equivalent to a penetration of 130%–, around 54 million of which are 3G. In addition, the plentiful investments in 4G infrastructure now on the horizon suggest that mobile phone technology will play an even more vital role in Brazilian communications.

Brazil 2.0

Social networks are another decisive factor in the world of communication in Brazil. The country has over 55 million Facebook accounts –second only to the US in the global user ranking. The social network Orkut, which in Brazil is run by Google, was knocked off the top spot in late 2011, but still boasts a significant mass of followers. With regard to Twitter, Brazil also follows behind the US in the total number of users, with São Paulo being the city with the fourth largest number of tweets in the world, after only Jakarta, Tokyo and London. During the CONTEC conference, the Rio de Janeiro-based writer Thalita Rebouças stated the advantages of using Twitter and maintaining a direct dialogue with over 200,000 readers that follow her.

Social media in Brazil reach beyond Facebook, Orkut and Twitter. Local networks organized by special interest groups have already emerged and are remarkably active. On the panel that I had the chance to moderate, Viviane Lordello gave some figures for Skoob, the largest social network of readers in Brazil: some 600,000 Internet users exchange recommendations, reviews and even physical books, which are sent by post. The members come from across Brazil, but over 45% live in São Paulo. Also worth mentioning is the work carried out by Copia, a digital content platform run by the US group DCM. During the event, Marcelo Gioia –the CEO of Copia Brazil– detailed the company’s plans at the local level, particularly since having sealed an alliance with Submarino, Latin America’s leading e-commerce firm. This joining of forces has led to Submarino Digital Club, a social network in which users can exchange notes as well as buy and download e-books.

Local and global. CONTEC 2013

The need to establish local alliances was partly discussed during the session entitled “Panoramic vision: looking into the crystal ball”, which included the participation of Tania Fontolan –from the energetic Brazilian conglomerate Abril Educação– and Hegel Braga –the director of Wiley Brazil–, under the coordination of Holger Volland. Fontolan began by explaining how Abril Educacão sees the local educational market for the coming years: growth in cloud content; proliferation of tablets and cell phones; videogame-based learning and open content. Braga, for his part, gave details of Wiley’s activities in Brazil: the company opened its own office in São Paulo a few months ago, from where it hopes to develop agreements with local partners and bring technology from abroad to be adapted to Brazilian clients. Tania Fontolan agreed on the importance of working with local alliances, although she was skeptical about the idea of implanting closed technological solutions, since they often turn out to be simply unadaptable.

Jurgen Boos and Marifé Boix García –the director and vice-director of the FBF respectively– underlined their long-term commitment to Brazil and Latin America, and also announced a new edition of CONTEC for June 2013, this time in the form of an international fair for educational and multimedia content, with separate days for professionals and the public. The FBF already has offices in New Delhi, Moscow, Beijing and New York, and will soon open another in São Paulo. According to Jurgen Boos, professional networks and the FBF’s knowhow may be a great help to the Brazilian publishing industry:

“Brazil has an enormous domestic market, with almost 200 million people. However, it is too focused on the local context, it still lacks international contacts and that is where I think we can play an important role. We would also like to work with Brazilian universities, because I believe everything we do should be local. We can bring our experience, but we need professionals from the local market.”

E-books at the Biennial: a future between EPUB and the cloud

On the 9th of August, some 12 kilometres from Ibirapuera Park–in Anhembi Exhibition Centre–, the 22nd São Paulo Book Biennial was inaugurated, under the slogan “Books transform the world, books transform people”. The exhibition lasted 11 days and was visited by 750,000 people, which only goes to confirm the dynamism of a publishing industry with an annual turnover of almost 2.5 billion dollars.

Compared to the stands for printed books, the space dedicated to e-books was fairly limited, which is in line with the low turnover recorded by the digital sector: indeed, e-books currently account for less than 1% of the Brazilian publishing industry’s total earnings. Nevertheless, certain trends indicate the accelerated growth of the new market.

As we mentioned earlier, there are numerous foreign companies working with home-grown partners to offer digital content that is increasingly adapted to local readers. Thanks to the launch of its e-book social network –following the agreement with Copia–, Submarino’s booth was one of the most visited at the Biennial.

Moreover, the considerable investment capability of the domestic players has enabled the emergence of original platforms like Núvem de Livros, developed by the Gol Group, in association with the operator Vivo-Telefônica. During the Biennial, students were able to find out about the features and costs of this cloud platform, which has over 800,000 users and for less than a dollar a week offers access to around 6,500 titles.

In addition, domestic publishers are actively working on digitizing their backlists, although there is still a lot of room for improvement, since according to the expert Camila Cabete, more than 60% of Brazilian EPUB files contain structuring errors. In any case, the migration is already underway and in 2011 titles published in digital format accounted for 9% of all registered works. Various publishing houses have embarked on a trade offensive, particularly in the field of scientific literature: Atlas, GEN, Editora Saraiva and Grupo A have joined forces to offer their titles through Minha Biblioteca, a digital content platform aimed at the academic market.

Who wants to Kindle a Fire in Amazonia?

The 10th of August was the key date for e-books during the Biennial. Throughout this veritable “D day”, the public was able to listen to various leading actors from the digital sphere: Andrew Lowinger from Copia, Marie Pellen from OpenEdition, Jesse Potash from Pubslush, Julio Silveira from Imã, Eduardo Melo from Simplíssimo, Marcílio Pousada from Livraria Saraiva and Russ Grandinetti from Amazon Kindle. After the first conference, the organizers were forced to move the event to a larger room, since the number of attendees had surpassed all expectations.

When Russ Grandinetti’s turn came, not even the new room was big enough to accommodate those interested and many who turned up were left outside. The executive made it clear from the outset that he wouldn’t give a date for Amazon’s arrival in Brazil and limited himself to listing the virtues of the Kindle e-reader and the Fire tablet. Carlo Carrenho –the director of PublishNews– coordinated the exchange between Grandinetti and the public, and towards the end recalled a phrase by Jeff Bezos: “I want to go to the moon … and to Brazil”, which led to a question that had the audience in stitches: “When are you thinking of opening that lunar subsidiary, then?”. The fact is that Amazon’s launch in Brazil has taken far too long –perhaps a sign that things weren’t quite as simple as they appeared. In addition to Brazilian tax complexities, there have been a number of unexpected difficulties. The amazon.com.br domain, for example, belonged to a local company by the same name, until very recently: it took 7 years for the US Amazon to reach an agreement with its Brazilian counterpart –indeed, it was no easy matter for the Americans to claim the rights to the brand, since the Amazon River happens to be in Brazil. In any case, the Seattle-based company seems willing to do whatever is necessary to establish itself in South America.

Right after Amazon came the turn of the bookstore Saraiva. By that time, there were so many people in the room that it seemed more like a rock concert than a talk on e-books. Marcílio Pousada reiterated the importance of possessing 102 stores across Brazil and being one of the major sellers of tablets and books at the national level. It is worth emphasizing that Saraiva has over 2 million active clients in its electronic division. Thanks to a team of 60 people dedicated to digital developments, it has implemented its own reading application and other initiatives designed specifically for the local reader. This potential rival of Amazon’s currently offers around 10,000 titles in Portuguese and hopes to add another 5,000 by next December.

The one leading the dance

Brazil is now witnessing a convergence of powerful forces from both home and abroad. Like mighty rivers that interconnect, the public sector, local companies and global firms have formed a rich and dynamic ecosystem. This assessment could be applied to different areas of the economy, such as the transport infrastructure, for example, as could be seen from the government’s recent announcements about the construction of railway lines and highways.

In the sphere of digital publications, the synergy between public and private as well as local and global players is particularly evident. The stature of the actors involved suggests there will be accelerated growth in both the supply of content and the economic earnings generated. The country has everything to gain from the arrival of the e-book multinationals: Brazilian companies receive significant technology transfer from abroad, while domestic consumers get access to first-rate platforms and devices.

Nevertheless, it is also necessary to point out that there is a danger of a glut in supply. Indeed, many of my Brazilian interlocutors were surprised by the excessive optimism expressed by international firms who think that in this market they have found the new El Dorado, the longed for escape from the economic crisis afflicting their parent companies. What is for certain is that –as the policy makers underlined during the CONTEC conference–, Brazil continues to face challenges that will take a long time and a great deal of effort to resolve.

In any case, despite all the difficulties, Brazil has taken on an undeniable importance and is already dialoguing on equal terms with the giants of the global electronic industry. It is the country of the samba, spontaneity and cheerfulness, but as we mentioned at the beginning, this should not give rise to confusion. Brazil –with its active public sector, its powerful companies and its extraordinary people– is looking to lead the dance, not to be led.

Digital publishing merely reflects these contrasts. Indeed, a Lebanese e-book publisher is not unaware that he has potential readers in such geographically distant places as Morocco, but he is also mindful that in order to reach them he must partly adapt his content and prices. Similarly, an Egypt-based iPad apps developer knows that his real clientele is found among the middle and upper sectors of his country’s social pyramid, since the majority of the local populace does not own these devices—although they do have cell phones. This great variety has resulted in a heterogeneous and promising digital market, as we saw clearly at the 2012 Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. Below is a summary of observations arising from numerous interviews carried out both during and after the fair with leading players from e-commerce, apps developers, digital aggregators, traditional publishers, and Internet start-ups.

The boom in e-commerce: advances and challenges

[Read more on Al Kitab Al Arabi]

So how will eBooks affect the various industry players: authors, publishers, distributors, booksellers, libraries and readers. Because everyone is affected by this change.

Thanks to its attractive interface and to its wide range of possibilities, Calibre has become one of the most popular open source ebooks software. With Calibre, users can convert their ebooks into several formats and manage their libraries and metadata. In this interview, we spoke to Kovid Goyal, creator of Calibre, on different aspects of the ebook industry as well as on his plans for the future.

1. Calibre has been distributed mainly as a desktop application. Is there a demand for a cloud-based version, now that more and more e-readers come with wifi/3G?

Calibre includes a content server which allows you to share your library via the internet. As for a full hosted solution, that is something that may be developed in the future, but it would have to be a paid for service, since there will be hosting costs.

2. Do you have any information/statistics related to cell phone and other non-ereader usage of Calibre?

A new service developed in South Africa is aiming to change the way books are distributed in developing countries. Paperight is a web-based system that claims to “turn any business with any printer into a print-on-demand bookstore.” Any business can register at paperight.com to get book-content to print for walk-in customers. Paperight was developed at Electric Book Works by digital-publishing expert Arthur Attwell, and is now funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation. We spoke to Arthur about the service.

1) What does Paperight do?

Copy shops are already de facto book-distributors. They meet massive customer demand for books worldwide – but they have to do so informally, and often illegally, by photocopying. We’re bringing them into the formal industry, by making their jobs both legal and easy. They’ll do more printing business, and publishers will earn rights revenue from it. Our website provides a growing catalogue of books that our outlets can licence and print for customers at the click of a button. Publishers earn revenue from each licence.

2) How do the prices compare to traditional books?

In South Africa, Paperight printouts will generally be about 20% below the retail price of books. In each country, rights fees and the economics of book publishing and printing will differ. Where we can’t beat the retail price of conventional books, we emphasise the accessibility of Paperight outlets: since anyone can be an outlet anywhere, we lower the total cost of buying a book – which might include travelling to a store, the risk of it being out of stock, waiting for a delivery, or buying Internet time or borrowing a credit card for ordering.

As a result of a 2011 report, “Digital Publishing in Developing Countries”, carried out by Octavio Kulesz in October 2010 and commissioned by the International Alliance of Independent Publishers, with the support of the Prince Claus Foundation, this year sees the launch of the the Lab, an experimentation and training unit sponsored by the Alliance, the Prince Claus Fund and the International Organization of La Francophonie.Among the many activities carried out by the Lab will be tracking news related to digital publishing developments in the “Digital South” — the metaphoric area that is home to the majority of developing countries — with updates offered via the Twitter account@digisouth and on the Lab’s web site. What follows is a summary from the Lab of recent developments in this dynamic region.

Brazil: Latin America’s Powerhouse

2012 has already been a year rich in news from Brazil, including the report 6 out of 10 Brazilians now belong to the middle class, resulting in an increase in online sales. E-books are increasingly interesting to buyers and new digital strategies are being developed by publishing houses and aggregators alike. The government has demonstrated an interest in developing indigenous tablets and early examples, such as the YPY by Positivo, may prove competitive to foreign models, as a result of low price and adaptability. Finally, the Brazilian Book Chamber (CBL) has announced that it will hold a Third International Congress on Digital Books, together with other training initiatives – yet another sign that the Latin American giant aspires to position itself as a hub in the regional world of electronic publishing.

[Read more: Publishing Perspectives]