Publishing Piracy Intrigue: China Stepping on Japan Copyrights...Oh, and Apple is Bad Boy Too!

Not only is China violating some of Japan's copyrights through it's huge internet search beast Baidu (on it's Baidu library)...but, Apple iPad is also stomping all over portions of Japanese copyrighted material.

And guess what? The Chinese Baidu search beast has made a successful effort at policing it's copyright infringements whereas Apple has NOT! Interesting, no?

This intriguing story unfolds on the Japan & China 'Realtime' Report blogs of the Wall Street Journal:

The publishing business may be in the throes of the unknown, but one thing is for sure: Japanese publishing giants aren’t afraid to pick up the sword – or pen — in the name of copyright protection.

The consortium of four Japanese publishing associations that joined forces to take on Apple Inc. has expanded the reach of their sword to China. The associations requested Baidu, the beast of Internet search in China, to take steps to prevent illegal uploads of copyrighted material on “Baidu Library.” In the absence of effective policing and preventive tactics pirated versions of Japanese manga, anime and novels have run rampant on the free document-sharing service where users can upload and surf files for free, according to a joint press release on Monday. It was signed by the Japan Book Publishers Association, the Japan Magazine Publishers Association, the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan and the Digital Comic Association.

“Authors and publishers have made removal requests to Baidu each time the existence of these ‘digital bootlegs’ is discovered, but there is no end to the illegal uploading of data and the cat-and-mouse-game continues,” said the statement, adding that “Baidu bears grave responsibility for this problem.”

Read and learn more

Create Professional Ebooks Using Free Internet Tools!

There are neat, FREE, downloadable programs on the net that will allow you to create a professional ebook with an outstanding cover, assign an ISBN, AND format it for all the e-readers (Calibre is one open-source, free, software program that does this auto formating).

Jean-Baptiste Piggin (no decent link found for this writer) wrote this exciting article for Monsters and Critics dot com about the self-publishing guru Michiaki Tanaka speaking at the Frankfurt Book Fair:

Create your own e-books for free, urges guru

Self-publishers who want to sell advice, poetry or their favourite recipes direct to their readers can create e-books without spending a cent, a Japanese expert said Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Michiaki Tanaka sells books he has written about feng shui, a set of oriental esoteric beliefs, via Amazon.com and online shops on Japan's smartphone web, i-Mode.

Anybody can convert a collection of text files and photos into a professional-looking e-book using free tools on the web, he said.

'Don't spend money to create the book. It's more important to devote your resources to selling the book,' he told a seminar at the annual five-day book fair which is running until Sunday.

Tanaka said he uses Calibre, an open-source software
program which can be downloaded free from the web, to convert files to the formats used on e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle, the Sony Reader and the Apple iPhone.

The idea of cutting traditional book publishers completely out of the book producing process might seem subversive at the world's biggest book-publishing congress. But authors selling books direct to readers are a growing segment of the book business, at least by volume.

Nielsen Book, the company which issues the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) in Britain, says it provided 800,000 ISBNs last year for books that sold fewer than 10 copies.

In 2004, the tally of these micro-published titles in Britain was just 300,000, meaning the segment has grown 167 per cent in just five years.

A book with a circulation of less than 10 is obviously not profitable, but there may be money to be made with sales of 1,000 and above. Nielsen Book says 18 per cent of book sales in Britain comprises titles selling just 1,000 to 10,000 copies.

Read more http://alturl.com/tyghv