Lisa Siregar

E-readers like the Kindle make it easy to carry hundreds of books with you. (Photo: Mark Lennihan, AP)

Some Indonesian Readers Use Every Trick in The E-Book

When the day is slow and the coffee has brewed, Ellen Kusumo, a human resources employee in Jakarta, likes to spend her free time reading. Be it a new novel or her current favorite, “Shantaram” by Gregory David Roberts, Ellen reads while having coffee, in a cab or waiting for a friend. But instead of weighing down her handbag with books, Ellen just presses a few buttons —this tech-savvy user has about 50 electronic books loaded onto her BlackBerry.

“I like that I can take my library everywhere,” she says.

Having a virtual bookshelf in one’s pocket is one of the benefits of collecting electronic books. Readers are able to delete those that they don’t like and expand their selection whenever they have access to the Internet.

These days, with the technology market saturated with smartphones, pocket PCs and other reading devices, e-books are a practical alternative for Indonesia’s bookworms.

Ellen says she has been using e-books for five years and prior to that read books from her personal computer and O2 smartphone. With the proliferation of the Internet, she says it’s been easy to expand her e-book collection.

“Usually, I look for the free ones at mIRC,” she says, referring to a popular Microsoft chat forum.

She also regularly enters the site’s “bookz” channel room to share files with readers from all over the world.

However, when she can’t find the e-book she wants, Ellen goes to Fictionwise.com for a sale. The Web site sells e-books in categorized genres and various formats, such as Windows for Pocket PC users and Adobe for cellphone users. On her BlackBerry, Ellen uses one of the most popular reading programs, Mobipocket Reader.

“To tell you the truth, it’s cheaper than Aksara [bookstore],” she says.

E-book prices usually range from $8 to $12. The cost also depends on whether the books are available in hard or soft cover at brick-and-mortar bookstores. When the title is only available in hard cover, the price of the e-book version is usually much higher.

“Basically, e-books are my main form of reading, so I don’t mind paying for them,” Ellen says.

Fajar Jasmin, a professional blogger, uses e-reader Kindle because health issues make it difficult for him to sit for long periods of time; he says that Kindle makes it easier for him to enjoy reading while lying down. Fajar also underlines having the flexibility of taking his e-book collection wherever he goes.

Kindle was released in 2007 by online giant Amazon.com and sells for about $300. Users are able to connect to the Internet from the reader to browse and download e-books. There is also a Kindle application for iPhones and iPods.

However, Fajar acknowledges that the popular e-reader can be hard to find for many in Indonesia.

“Most people from outside the US are discouraged from buying it because its wireless feature is locked to the Amazon network” in the United States, Fajar says. The only other option is to download e-books from a personal computer and transfer those files to Kindle, which is what Fajar recommends.

He also accesses Gutenberg.com, where free e-books are legally available.

“When the copyright on a book expires, the title then becomes public property, and that’s when an e-book version can be created,” Fajar says. However, copyright laws vary greatly from country to country.

“For example, in the United States it takes 40 years before a copyright expires,” he adds.

According to Ansori Sinungan, director of the intellectual assets unit at the Ministry of Human Rights and Justice, copyrights on intellectual property in Indonesia only expire 50 years after the creator has died.

“No one needs to register their copyright as their material is automatically protected,” Ansori said. “This way, police and our staff have the right to raid anyone who sells pirated items.”

The proliferation of file-sharing Web sites has also raised industry questions about copyright issues.

Local Web site VirtualXBook.com is another source for registered users to buy or rent e-books, and the owners are adamant that their business is above board.

“Our main goal is to provide much cheaper books for readers and a greater range of categories, from comics to scientific journals, which are all original and are free from piracy,” says Otis Almatsier, one of the founders of VXB.

Otis says the site started as part of an experiment to enhance the existing e-book format, with help from program engineer colleagues Anies Maududi and Achmad Munandar. The three resigned from their full-time jobs in October 2008, launched their beta version Web site in January this year, and the site was opened to the public in May. Currently, the Web site has 1,088 active members who have access to every title in the library. Members can also buy hard-copy versions of various titles from the site.

Some 200 titles are available on the Web site, with genres ranging from teen-lit, short stories and Islamic texts to comics, graphic novels and self-help and motivational books. Otis says the team also welcomes students who want to share their research studies with the public and earn revenue from them.

“Hopefully, by April 2010, we will have 5,000 titles on our list,” Otis says.

However, he says that VXB is not a community for sharing e-books, and that all of their titles have been legally purchased from publishers.

Although the potential for copyright issues is high, especially with Indonesia’s track record on piracy, there is a possibility that e-book developers may already be one step ahead.

“These days, some e-books can be locked so that they can only be read from one gadget,” Ellen says.

Taking its cue from copyright cases such as those associated with file-sharing portal Napster, Otis says that VXB will survive only if it provides legal content.

In the early stages of the site, Otis says publishers were concerned with the piracy issue of producing e-books in Indonesia.

“I tried to convince them that this is all legal, and that we have features to prevent piracy, which they are quite happy with,” Otis says, referring to a watermark that appears on every page if the e-book is cracked by hackers.

“People can still print-screen the page, but I think that’s too much hassle, and the result won’t be as clear as the legal version,” he says.

Just like readers who buy paper books, the sharing of e-books among readers is inevitable. Ellen says she doesn’t mind sharing her collection but is aware of the copyright issues.

“As a downloader, I’m happy with free e-books. But as an upstanding citizen, I know I’m not supposed to do that. I don’t mind buying, though. That’s what I do if the e-book I want is not available for free.”

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