Electronic Publishing

The big challenge that most philatelic authors face is how to produce an up to date and affordable, high-quality final publication.

Philately is a subject that demands lots of high quality and color pictures to enable discussion and description of stamp varieties to be best conducted, but to date, we have been forced to make do with poor quality black and white images in almost all cases.  Curiously, the one recent exception to this that I'm currently aware of is a Russian catalog (the Standard Collection Part 6) which is full of color images of all the stamps they describe, a very commendable effort for a publication that had an initial print run of only 5000 copies and proving to us all that such a high quality approach combined with affordable short run printing can be possible.

A solution - indeed, two solutions - are now at hand to solve all three of these classic problems - it is now possible to offer very up to date material, at very low price, and in very high quality.  But few if any authors are making good use of this.  Those of you that belong to societies that publish material should lobby for them to embrace these new technologies.

I am referring to web publishing and to CDrom publishing, both of which can separately (or together!) revolutionise current methods of printing and publishing material.

Let's consider the three constraints that I list above and then see how each of them can be solved with these new technologies.

Timeliness of Information

The problem is made worse because, once printed, it is a very costly exercise to revise and issue a new edition of his work, and of course, it is also a very costly exercise for purchasers of the original work to then buy an updated copy.  If the market for a new book is perhaps 5000 copies, then the market for a revised updated edition of the same book is maybe only 2000 copies.

The reality is that there is very little complete and fully finished work on our subject published out there - every researcher and every author knows that additional facts and information keeps coming to light - sometimes adding to areas of uncertainty and doubt, sometimes answering unresolved questions, and sometimes surprisingly contradicting what was previously understood.  But once something has been published, it assumes a permanency that in many times is ill deserved.

All authors would love a way to be able to update and improve on their work in a more "interactive" manner, and the ability to do this would also enable them to release earlier drafts of their findings sooner.  These earlier drafts not only get some valuable information to the hobby sooner, but also encourage interaction with other collectors who can respond to the draft, enabling future drafts to already incorporate feedback from readers.

Electronic publishing is an ideal solution to this problem.  The "lead time" to electronically publish a book can be measured in hours and days instead of weeks and months, and the costs are also vastly lower.  This can enable faster printing of partial work and more frequent republishing and reprinting of "completed" work.

Publishing/Distribution Costs and Profit Needs

We're not suggesting that philatelic authors are greedy.  The challenge is they don't have the same economies of scale open to them that a best-seller author does.  The costs of printing a short run of maybe 1000 or 2000 copies of a book are hugely greater than the costs of printing an extended run of maybe 100,000 or 200,000 copies of a book.

Plus, after the book has been printed, it has to be freighted to distributors and to retailers and eventually on to the end purchaser, and until they make paper less heavy (!) the postage and shipping costs will always be a considerable extra cost burden that someone has to bear.

Lastly, I'm the first to agree about the very fair need for philatelic authors to earn some return (I hesitate to call it "profit") from their work.  When you consider the hundreds and thousands of hours that they invest in their researching, and the vast amounts of money that they spend to travel to exhibitions, to buy material, etc etc, there can be no doubt that anything they get in return is merely a partial recompense for the money they've already spent, and probably equates to a very low hourly rate.  And, of course, getting such fair compensation when spread over a small print run requires a higher profit component per book than when spread over a long print run.

Electronic publishing is an ideal solution to the high cost of short run traditional publishing.  It truly is a "win-win".  Authors can sell their material for a lower price, but still make a higher profit per item sold, because the costs of creating/publishing/distributing are so much lower.  And, if the selling price is lower, they'll probably sell more copies, too, increasing still further their own return (and potentially even enabling them to reduce again the price they sell each copy for!).

Most authors write with the primary purpose of creating a lasting legacy and contribution to the philatelic body of knowledge rather than as a money-making venture, and this way, they have an opportunity to make a broader better contribution that will reach more people, while still making as much or more personal return.  Wow!

Quality Issues

A higher quality black and white image requires a more expensive type of paper to print onto, as well as possibly a more expensive printing process, and of course, color images require not only expensive paper but also much more expensive costs for preparing the material to print from and then going through special high-quality "four color" printing presses.

Such costs can seldom be justified for a book that is only having a 1000 or so copies printed, and so we are all too often forced to settle for "second best" (or even third or fourth best, it often seems!), which still remains expensive!

Electronic publishing presents as the ideal solution to this problem, too.  The extra costs of high quality color images are represented only by requiring some extra storage space for the larger images, and generally storage space is extremely inexpensive.

The New Solution Part 1 - Web Publishing

The key benefits that the Internet offer to philatelic writers are its very low cost, its universal distribution to everyone everywhere, and the instantaneous ease with which material can be added or changed.  With new web authoring programs such as "Front Page" (which I use myself) anyone that can use a simple word processor can create simple web pages, and anyone that can lay out an attractive page in their word processor or desk top publishing program can do the same thing for a web page.

There is even more good news - good quality color costs no more than poor quality black and white images on the internet!  You can add color not only to your text (like I am doing here - the revolutionary ability to colorise your text as well as your images can add a whole new dimension to formatting and making the text of the book user friendly) but also to any images you publish - quality images can be offered at almost no extra cost over poor quality black and white.

There is only one limitation of internet publishing, and that is, for some people, a very important limitation.  Profit.  Most internet material allows for free access, and a researcher that seeks some financial compensation for the time and effort (and costs) of his research will find it more difficult to get reimbursement this way.  However, "difficult" isn't the same as "impossible" and it is perfectly possible to password protect parts of a web site so that only people that have registered (ie paid a fee) are given access, indeed some philatelic society web sites (eg Rossica) do this at present.

Indeed, this can be used as a "marketing tool" by making some selected parts of the total work available for free, and then requiring a subscription to access the balance of the material.  That way people have a chance to "try before they buy" and if the material is indeed truly useful, they are much more likely to be motivated to buy access to the balance of the material after having sampled it to start with.

Another approach is to festoon one's web site with paid banner advertising, and to derive income from that source rather than from the philatelic visitors themselves.  This approach is used by most of the "information for free" sites on the web today, and there is no reason why it can't also be adopted by philatelic web sites (and some are already doing this).

Of course, some people don't have computers, and other people prefer books.  If a writer feels the need to cater for the wishes of 100% of his potential readers then there is an easy solution for that as well.  Take the internet content and print it the "old fashioned way" for such people in addition to keeping it fully revised and up to date (and in color) on the web site.  The Internet does not need to replace traditional printing, rather it can enhance it.

The New Solution Part 2 - CD roms

This makes it practical for anyone to consider making their own CDroms, one at a time.  Just as now anyone can create a website at low cost, so too can anyone create a CDrom at similar low cost.

For people wanting to make multiple copies and who don't wish to copy each one by hand, there are many commercial services offering low priced duplication.

A CDrom can be used in two ways.  It can be used to create an electronic "paperless" copy of a traditional printed publication, or it can be used to create a "hard copy" of an electronic web site.  In both cases, the cost to make the CD is minimal - everything that is needed is pretty much already on the web site or in the printed material - and the cost to distribute a small light CDrom is vastly less than the cost of sending a book somewhere.

The low cost and ease of making copies also means that it is much easier to revise and update material that is on CD rather than printed material.  And, just like the web site, there is no extra cost for using color in images and text.

A single CDrom can potentially hold up to something like a quarter million pages of text!  This capacity reduces when you start adding images and graphics, but by way of example, if we assume some sort of publication that comprises two drawings and two high quality color images per page, that would still allow for up to about 2000 pages of material to be put on the CDrom, and even more with some simple compression techniques.  By way of further illustration, this web site at present has approximately 1750 images (about half low quality and half high quality) and 260 web pages.  Even so, a single CDrom could hold the data for eight such web sites!  CDroms have a massive amount of storage.

Argument Against - Piracy Concerns

Of course, the inarguable truth is that it is very easy for just about anyone to copy a CDrom or website these days, making piracy a lot easier than would be the case standing over a photocopier copying all hundred pages or whatever of a book.  Plus the photocopied book is obviously a copy, and of poorer quality, while the copied CD or plagiarised web site is not so obviously pirated.

However, this concern need not be a crippling concern.  There are several approaches possible to minimise piracy.  The first consideration is to realise that the market size for pirated copies of specialised philatelic books is fairly small.  A pirate isn't going to be able to make a full time income selling ten or twenty copies of a pirated book, and I suggest that piracy will be infrequent and uncommon.

Another aspect of the small marketplace is that it is hard for any such piracy to be undetected by the rightful owner or by other responsible collectors.  How is a pirate going to "secretly" sell his pirated material?  Obviously, he will have to advertise it for sale, and sooner or later (probably sooner) will come to the attention of the rightful owner.

Another point is that by selling their material via CDrom or via web access, authors can greatly reduce the price they need sell their material for, while still getting the same financial return themselves.  If they can sell a CDrom for $10 instead of a book for $50 and still make the same amount of personal profit, then hopefully they will do this (rather than sell the CDrom for $50!).  And, when the price of the legitimate copy drops so drastically, the financial inducement to pirate copies drops, too.  It is just like counterfeit stamps.  While it might be worth your time to try and create a counterfeit Russia #1, who cares about a counterfeit Russia #5678 or some other 15c stamp!  This is probably the strongest argument against major piracy - it just isn't sufficiently profitable the same way that stamp counterfeiting can be.

There are other ways to counter piracy, too, by using some of the strategies that the software companies use.  The best two approaches are to use distinctively screen printed disks for distribution, and to offer reduced price upgrades for "registered owners".  Electronically published material could contain regular prominent references to a validation website or describing the type of disk it is sold on, or anything like that.  And the concept of getting purchasers to register their copy is an excellent one - this makes the entire publishing concept more "two-way" and interactive, and makes it easy and feasible for the author to update his material and then sell updated versions direct to the database of registered users.

Lastly, while there will no doubt be some piracy occuring, so too does this happen with printed material at present, and so too does it happen with software, videos, CDs, etc.  But there is no evidence to suggest that any tangible harm is done to Microsoft - their profit margins are immense, vcr's have boosted movie studio profits even though to start with the movie studios sought to make vcrs illegal, and latest evidence shows that the people who use Napster to copy CD material actually buy more CDs legally than ordinary people!

Let's not let the fear of new technology blind us to the massive benefits it offers us all - writers and readers alike.  And let's also recognise that Rossica already successfully distributes some material on CDrom, as does also the Aust/NZ Socy of Russian Philatelty.

Argument Against - Not Everyone Has a Computer

The fact that not everyone could read the published book never stopped an author publishing before, and so too is the fact that not everyone has a computer not a credible reason against pursuing a solution to these age old publishing problems that is so overwhelmingly positive.  Who knows, the increased availability of low priced information and resources on CDs and websites might encourage an increased acceptance of computers into the balance of members of our hobby.  :)

Furthermore, it is very easy to create a print version of the electronically published material so as to get 100% coverage to everyone.  Electronic publishing does not need to replace traditional publishing - it can supplement it.  We are not being forced into "either/or" choices.

(As an aside, I wonder what the statistics are for computer use amongst serious philatelists.  I suspect that it is increasingly high - eBay for one is a compelling reason for many philatelists to now get a computer and Internet account!!!)

A related thought is that not everyone likes computer material - many people prefer the convenience of a book (I do myself).  But if I'm faced with a black and white book for $40 or a color version in some computer form for $10, I know which I'd choose every time!  And, believe it or not, although I share a huge 3400 sq ft house with only my wife and my dog, it is completely full and I don't have a single remaining cubic foot of space to put extra books and journals in.  The space saving characteristics of electronic publishing are very appealing to me!

Summary and Conclusions

The crippling constraint that would be writers face of getting their material affordably published and distributed no longer needs to apply, using "self-publishing" techniques of CDroms and the internet.

The onerous cost burdens that purchasers of philatelic literature need to face also are no longer valid.  While not seeking to deny authors a fair opportunity to earn a return on their very costly investments, by reducing their publishing costs down to minimal levels, it would be possible for them to in turn reduce their selling prices to much lower levels, enabling more members of the hobby to more widely benefit from the research they have conducted.

And, after all, isn't that what philately is all about?  A shared experience of learning and teaching.  Kudos to Rossica and the Aust/NZ Socy of Russian Philately for already embracing this new technology, let's encourage other publishers to follow their lead.

You can help make this happen!  The long standing nature of our hobby sometimes makes it slow to respond to new challenges and opportunities.  Lobby any philatelic organisations you belong to and encourage them to release all their material either on the internet or via CDrom.  Heck, you're even saving trees, too!