Working towards an open market place for digital books: launch of a project to develop a new distribution model. MO3T

For the first time, 18 partners* from the worlds of publishing, booksellers and digital technology have got together to work on an ambitious project: MO3T.

MO3T was born out of a shared conviction: for digital books to  develop in all their diversity, it is essential to create the conditions  for an open and pluralistic market, the only way to guarantee  development, innovation and long term success.

This is why MO3T  is above all an open model: the objective is to enable any reader to buy  content in any form, from any seller (online or in a shop), to read it  on any device, to combine it with any service and to keep the content  over time.

Based on a new approach towards interoperability (the  interoperability of rights), MO3T allows those involved in the model –  publishers and e-distributors, booksellers and personal library  operators - to each develop their own businesses.

MO3T  facilitates access to the digital market place for the traditional  booksellers, bookshops. Libraries, schools and the ‘new outlets’ (social  networks, blogs...) also have their role to play in this diversified  digital content distribution network.

Thanks to MO3T, publishers  are able to design new offers and control access to them, yet with the  reassurance that the security measures against hacking and the digital  rights guaranteed by personal library operators still apply.

Personal  library operators keep the digital rights on behalf of the reader and  this allows for new uses which are limited by current DRM systems.

In  the final analysis, MO3T offers the reader every freedom in an easy to  use and fluid format to buy, rent, send or lend a digital book; in the  bookshop of his or her choice, online, on social networks, via chat  rooms…For their family members, customers, employees or students.

By  offering standardised interconnections, MO3T brings down the entry  barriers into the digital market place and creates a truly and  sustainably open framework, to encourage competition and innovation at  all levels of the book distribution chain.

The purpose of MO3T  is to welcome and interconnect as many players as possible in the book  distribution chain on a national and international scale, for the  greater benefit of customers and readers.

Today, the MO3T  project has been chosen for the second tender for the Digital Content  Technologies project in the Future Investments Programme.

With a budget of € 7 million, the aim is to produce a demonstrator of the Open Model.

Project timetable

• Official MO3T project launch: 27 September 2012
• January 2013: mock-up
• September 2013: prototype
• End 2013: production start-up

*Partners in the consortium

• Publishers – digital distributors: Eden Livres, Editis, Editions  Flammarion, Editions Gallimard, La Martinière Groupe, Immatériel.fr.
• Bookshops: Librairie Dialogues in Brest, Librairie Lamartine in Paris,  Librairie La Procure in Paris, Syndicat de la Librairie française
• Telecoms operators: Orange, SFR
• Books operators: Dilicom
• IT and technology service providers: Argia, EPagine, Viaccess-Orca, De Marque
• Research centres: Institut Mines-Telecom