A fresh chapter in pay-per-use

Last April, a group of publishers obtained a stay order against a shop in Delhi selling photocopied chapters from textbooks. Students wanted the practice to continue, citing the high cost of buying many textbooks only to use a few chapters from them. Attano, an educational e-book store, may have an answer to their dilemma. It has tied up with three publishers—Pearson Education, Sheth Publishing House, and Lakshmi Publications—to launch ChapterBuy, which will allow students to buy only the chapters they want. Around 850 e-books and 10,000 chapters are on offer, and Attano is in talks to rope in more publishers.

“Students refer to four or five books on a particular topic. If we can provide content at an affordable cost, it could be a winner,” says Soumya Banerjee, CEO, Attano. “The publishers’ fears about copyright violations are taken care of since the content is provided in a secure format.” It can be accessed only on the device on which it is downloaded.

Using a free e-reader downloaded from Attano’s website, a student can browse titles and the table of contents (chapter titles). They pay for the chapters they download. They can then highlight, bookmark, and annotate the text.

Banerjee knows pricing is the key. “We are competing with photocopies,” he says. The cheapest chapter is Rs 3.50, while the most expensive is Rs 1,116. The median is Rs 40.

Students generally either photocopy chapters or download them from torrent sites. Publishers seethe about piracy, and students worry about quality when downloading or publishing.

Neelabh Mallick, a student of Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, is willing to go for study material in an interactive format if it is affordably priced.

Publishers stand to gain too. K. Srinivas, vice president, higher education, Pearson Education, says technology will change the consumption pattern from control at the source to control with the consumer. “See how it changed the music industry. On the same lines, students can create mash-ups the way they want and pay only for what they use. Publishers should view this as an opportunity.”

Shamnad Basheer, a professor of intellectual property rights at the WB National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, has been a campaigner for the right to photocopy for educational purposes. He says ChapterBuy is a “disruptive model” with the potential to make the photocopying issue redundant. “Any model that makes legal enforcement irrelevant is definitely a great one.”

The option to buy content in small packages at affordable prices will help grow the e-book/chapter market. Content quality will also improve. Enayet Kabir, associate vice president of consultancy firm Technopak, believes that poor content will get pushed out as students pick the best.