Electronic book publishing has many of the same risks and opportunities as electronic music publishing. By delivering text direct to the user's computer screen, the e-book could cut down costs, and allow creators to deal directly with their audience, bypassing   traditional publishers and readers. But it also raises the possibility of mass piracy  . Phil Rance, founder and managing director of Online Originals, a London-based e-book publisher, sums it up. "No one wants Napster   to happen to books." Indeed, the most popular MP3 have put the frighteners on   an industry that generally operates some way behind the "bleeding edge". The Mata Group, a leading US-based market researcher, says publishers are far too concerned about protecting their rights, "We believe all the recent legal control over Napster is like putting a finger in a river that is already overflowing. Publishers need to deal with reality and come up with new ways to develop wide electronic distribution  , asking the question: 'How can we use the certainty of wide distribution to our advantage?'" At the moment, most publishers would like to limit the use of e-books to the person who bought them, or to the computer used to download them. If that can be done, e-books become just an extra income stream in a publishing industry that would continue to operate the way it does today, according to Terry Robinson, business manager for Adobe's e-paper group. "If you've cracked digital rights aspect, you've cracked the market," he says. Robert Nichols, Books Director at BOL agrees, "Rights management is absolutely important. Publishers just say that 'until copyright is secure, we're not going to talk'." What do publishers care most about e-books?
Copyright. Price. Quality. Popularity.