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Digital: content is not about to be supplanted

For those who followed the battle that pitted record labels against online music sellers, the situation may look bad from the outset: could book publishing be the third victim of digitalization after music publishing and the press? Would it also lose out to pirating or be marginalized by "e-tailers" - online merchants - or both? Would publishers still have a role to play in a world where, in theory, anyone can fi nd what they are looking for without the need for intermediaries?

The answers to all these questions started to emerge in 2009, and they are reassuring for publishers. Google created a universal digital library by scanning books by the million without permission from copyright holders. However, the US and French courts ruled that such a practice was wrong and that the private agreement previously reached between US authors and publishers does not automatically apply to all worldwide production of books. Amazon, which had converted downloadable versions of all US bestsellers into products at knock-down prices to encourage consumers to buy its Kindle player, saw its policy countered by Apple in January 2010. The firm opted for a model that leaves publishers free to determine the price of their new releases for download on its iPad. To be profitable, both are in vital need of prescriber brands to attract, channel and monetize flows of visitors and consumers to their sites, notwithstanding long tail theories, which seem to have... tailed off.

The balance of power between publishers and Internet giants, which appeared much more favorable to the latter, thus shifted at the end of the year. Hachette Livre was largely responsible for this, lending all its weight to very high level discussions and negotiations.

Full of twists and turns, 2009 seems to have ended on a familiar note: "Content is (still) king!".