Coming later this year... the No.1 Australian e-book information site.
Meanwhile you are welcome to browse the newsletter below.
B r u c e ' s
A
U S T R A L I A N__E - B O O K__N E W S L E T T E R
***Vol.I, No.5, June 2001***
<<< for local and international digital book news - to subscribe see information at base >>>
NB: Archive pages are in general preserved in toto. Accordingly, outdated links on archive pages are not updated. However they are deactivated if no longer working. Where the links were represented in words and not URL format, the previous existence of such links will no longer be apparent.
NSW appears, Queensland endears
*The NSW State Government has funded a library development grant to the Shorelink library network, which includes Lane Cove, Manly, Mosman, Stanton & Willoughby city libraries, for a pilot e-book project. Willoughby's Mylee Joseph reports that the libraries will jointly trial Softbook e-reader devices and making netLibrary titles available via the common Shorelink catalogue. Lane Cove's Jenny Bice is Project Manager. NSW Cabinet Office Director-General Roger Wilkins told this newsletter on 4 April that the $54,882 project grant would:
Progress at last -well done New South Wales.
*Meanwhile in Queensland, where Rocket eBooks are already functioning in ten libraries in the SE of the state, Toowoomba City Library has received a grant from the State Library of Queensland for a similar e-book evaluation project. Sue Hutley, Toowooomba's innovative Electronic Services Librarian, reported some initial hiccups in the project launched on 16 May, but remains enthusiastic about the venture, in which 15 e-readers -five each eBookmans, REB-1100s & colour REB 1200s - will feature. Read more project news, including special groundbreaking features such as FlexiSchool participation, at http://libserv.toowoomba.qld.gov.au/ebook/index.html (Back)
2. E-books Recognised as "Real" Books At Last
E-Books are Real Books June 1 2001. The U.S. National Book Foundation has announced it will now consider e-books for its prestigious National Book Awards, the winners of which will be notified in November. Meg Kearney, associate director of the NBF, says that. 'Submissions will be limited by the same things that limit the printed books we receive''. The new rules stipulate that any book published exclusively as an e-book can be considered by judges in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and young people's literature on its ''literary merit''. E-books published simultaneously with a paper edition will still be viewed as print book entries. Ironically the e-book entries will have to be specially printed and bound, as the rules still demand that entries be submitted in hard copy form. (Back)
3. It's War! Court Battle Rages as Publisher Claims E-Rights
Random House Sues Rosetta Books as Stoush Becomes Mortal Combat
Since February 27 e-book publishers have been anxiously awaiting the result of a key U.S. court battle, in which Random House publishers have sued new e-publisher RosettaBooks to cease and desist. In essence this is a test case in which Random House claims that the right to "print, publish and sell in book form" covers electronic media too, and that authors have no authority to separately allocate their electronic publishing rights. Random House has already established its own e-imprint AtRandom, & is these days a subsidiary of goliath German-based conglomerate Bertelsmann AG (operations in 60 countries, 81,000 employees and revenues of DM 32.4 billion). Their tiny adversary Rosettabooks.com in fact sells only established pre-1985 titles, priced below paperback level. The Rosetta site was launched in February 2001, with e-rights to 100 classics already obtained and many more under negotiation. If successful the lawsuit could be a heavy blow against the liberating power of e-publication to bring books back into print, as conventional publishers often simply fail to make most of their backlists available. With the future of digital rights up for grabs it was small wonder that the Author's Guild plus literary agent's group the Association of Authors Representatives have joined the defence case. On the other side a clutch of major publishers rushed to support Random House on April 30 as the full significance of the lawsuit dawned.The defence case counters that publishing rights not specifically granted still belong to an author, and points out that electronic rights are specifically mentioned as an independent grant even in Random House's own contracts since 1994. After a preliminary hearing on May 8 a ruling is now awaited on an interim injunction. Whoever wins, a Supreme Court appeal may well ensue in this high stakes confrontation. (Back)4. GEMSTAR or Deathstar? Darth Henry Zaps but Hackers Strike Back
GEMSTAR International stunned the e-world on April 3 2001 by shutting down senior e-book information website eBookNet without warning. Hundreds of valuable articles plus major forums marooned on the Net were among collateral casualties.
The highly respected and comprehensive eBookNet site was founded by Glenn Sanders in 1997, who later ran it independently for subsequent owners (Rocket eBook makers) NuvoMedia Inc. Glenn was joined by Wade Roush to become the dynamic duo of the e-book information world. Nurtured by Nuvomedia, the site still ran on for another year after Gemstar (which detractors point out spells ratsmeg backwards) took control of that company. But Gemstar supremo Henry Yuen suddenly decided to pull the plug. He was apparently nettled by a particular demonstration of the site's continued editorial independence - one of its many points of appeal to the e-book community - which he seemed to view as a challenge to Gemstar's bold but so far failing plans.
In a "Sayonara" email Glenn Sanders said that Gemstar had "No room in the budget for things like an industry news and community site…At least that's the official story… The only surprise is that it took more than a year for them to shut us down."
The shock closure alienated huge numbers of e-book fans and enraged Open Source community supporters. It followed anti-DRM crackers breaking REB encryption & posting code and hack instructions to various Web forums. This means that copyrighted books in Gemstar's "secure" .rb file format could in theory be freely copied by these politically motivated "pirates".
Gemstar quickly fought back, modifying their OS security in a patch contained in e-book downloads. But hackers circulated instructions on how to reinstall the unmodified software version and unfix the fix. They also claimed three more holes in the encryption, reserving the right to release details if Gemstar failed to allow users to create unencrypted files for the newer REB e-readers, as was possible on Nuvomedia's original Rocket eBook. The hackers also demanded that Gemstar release hardware code and documentation for that device.
Meanwhile the real April Fool may be Gemstar itself. CEO Henry Yuen admitted recently that his company had sold only sixty thousand REB1100 and REB1200 e-readers so far, despite spending millions on advertising and even enlisting Oprah Winfrey for sales promotion. With over 4,000 e-titles expensively purchased for the .rb format the company is on a losing streak at present, as it fights a desperate two front battle against the software titans Microsoft and Adobe on one hand and the inroads of other advancing devices on the other. Quipped one e-book figure regarding Gemstar's plight, "there's a hole in your bucket, Dear Henry, Dear Henry".
Comment: Get down off your high horse Henry, and smell the flowers. You threw away all the goodwill, impetus and community spirit Nuvomedia had built up by believing you knew best. Wrong, dude. Take everything, give nothing strategies do not win friends, but they do influence people against you. To paraphrase an old Beatle's song "You say you want a REBolution, well you know…you'd better free your mind instead". Time to rebuild your bridges if you have any sense. (Back)
5.Update: They're Back! EbookNet Returns as eBookWeb.org.
*****UPDATE: EbookNet founder Glenn Sanders and co-editor Wade Roush have teamed up again to produce eBookWeb.org. Basically it's the return of eBookNet but independently owned, so no one can pull the plug on it this time. They'll rely on sponsorships to support the site, but given their determinedly independent tradition that's not likely to slow them down. In fact their editorial charter (which you can read at http://www.ebookweb.com/editorial_charter.htm) pledges them to "continuing our commitment to fierce editorial independence and platform-neutrality".
The new site eBookWeb.org (mirrored on eBookWeb.com) will officially launch on July 4. You can view a temporary version already at: http://www.ebookweb.com/.
PS: Now it can be revealed! For the lowdown on the demise of eBookNet, & an insider take on Gemstar & what happened to the real stars of Nuvomedia, read Wade Roush's revelatory essay at: http://www.ebookweb.com/ebooknet.htm. (Back)
* E-Books 2001 Brunei Gallery, London, 20 March. Over 250 delegates from the UK & abroad milled about in the search for e-truth. R2D2 - sorry, R2 Consulting - opened with interesting explanatory mappie thingies, followed by NetLibrary, Questia & the yet-to-open ebrary pitching to academic librarians, who pitched their own concerns back, as did trad. publishers, in the early spring afternoon.
* First Annual Independent E-Book Awards: Charlottesville, Virginia, March 24 2001. Among the winners were Juliet Waldron for Mozart's Wife in the fiction section, The Spirit of the Internet by Lawrence Hagerty (non-fiction), and Stacey Richter's The Caveman in the Hedges (shorter works).
* The Eppies: Meanwhile the second annual ceremony of the "official" e-book awards took place on March 17th at the Embassy Hotel, Las Vegas, described by MC comic Jeff Strand as "a nice change from the flashiness and excess of Omaha". From 280 entrants prizes were awarded in eighteen categories. Winning authors were mainly American but entrants from Australia, Canada and South Africa also scored honours.
*Scholarly Publishing: Print Collections, E-Books, and Beyond, Ann Arbor, Michigan May 10-11 2001. Sponsored by Blackwell's Book Services & the Uni. of Michigan. Said Shirley Lambert "libraries and the educational market may be the natural fit for e-books, but we need to expand our notion of the book". Jim Neal of John Hopkins Uni. noted the thumpability and more of printed books -v-the differing advantages of the digital type, while publisher rep. Kathryn Blough reported that the most successful genres of e-books so far are Law & Technical/Scientific texts, school texts to Year 12, Romance, & Sci Fi. Sounds like big sales opportunities on Star Trek Voyager?
*TextOneZero at Marriott Brooklyn Hotel New York, May 22-23 2001; a biggie with over 70 speakers. New display technologies were prominent, while a highlight was a spirited panel discussion on Digital Rights Management. Warned participant Brad Templeton (chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and putative first e-publisher) "some pushes for DRM are trying to drive the copyright equation the other way, leading to laws that violate the First Amendment and alter the rights of citizens". Added panellist Jim Griffin: "The most effective forms of Digital Rights Management attack the motives for piracy, not their mechanisms".
*Towards an Electronic Cultural Atlas, 9th ECAI Conference, 12-16 Jun, University of Sydney. ECAI (http://www.ecai.org) is the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, with 19 participating institutions including the British Museum, UNESCO and the visionary new Alexandria Digital Library. Way to go, folks.
*The E-Book: Crouching Tiger or Hidden Dragon? Continental Ballroom, Hilton Hotel, San Francisco, June 17, 2001. Speakers thrashing digital book metaphors include publisher Kenneth Brooks, Professor James O'Donnell of UPenn (author of Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace), Publishers Weekly editor Nora Rawlinson, Richard Tam (founder of iUniverse), and Kate Wittenberg, a very cluey lady from Columbia Uni., with Ann Okerson of Yale convening.
*5th International Conference on Electronic Publishing (ELPUB 2001), University of Kent, England 5-7 July 2001. Folks, it's run by the International Council for Computer Communications (ICCC) together with the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). Who? Let's hope all these grand bodies aren't reorganizing the world behind our backs! Anyhow, their theme this year is 2001 in the Digital Publishing Odyssey. Pray that HAL is not invited. Giuseppe Vitiello of the Council of Europe is, to talk about A European Policy for Electronic Publishing, along with groovy speakers from fifteen countries and more attendees than you could email in a week. (Back)
7. E-reader news: Franklin eBookMan Review plus Devices Galore
Franklin eBookMan - Pioneer or P76? Since its release in February the Franklin eBookMan has received mixed reviews. On the praised side are: extreme portability, openness to unencrypted files & third party applications (take note, Gemstar!), & good handwriting recognition for the Memo feature (which however is difficult to use for some). The fact that you can install the highly regarded European MobiPocket reader software (available from http://www.mobipocket.com, but wiser to wait till it's not a beta any more) was seen as a big plus in the light of the non-appearance yet of the promised MS Reader. Access to free non-copyright titles in .txt and HTML formats, plus ability to play thousands of audio books from Audible.com were favourably mentioned, as was the price compared with Palm devices. Additional features - the calculator, address book, To Do list & Calendar & Memo Book - seem quite acceptable.
On the down side, users have slated the operating system requiring lengthy installation and the device running way too slowly in loading content. In fact loading HTML files was viewed as a nightmare. Plus the interface is not intuitive enough. Worse, OS instability and crashes were reported, not at all what we want in an e-reader. Converting other content to Franklin Reader format was also rated difficult. And horrors, some units lose all contents when changing batteries! Battery life has been praised by some & denigrated by others, but really, just two AAA batteries (not supplied with the base model, tsk tsk) seems under-powered. Use rechargeables folks! Backlighting for lowlight conditions is generally reported much too dim, and lack of storage space for MP3 files is a big minus for those who want to use the music-playing feature.
But all of this is fixable! And unlike the overpriced PALM devices the Franklin seems headed in the right direction dollarwise.
RECOMMENDATION: If you really can't wait, buy now aware of the downside. Otherwise, hold out for an upgraded second model, folks. If Franklin pays attention & fixes all the lacks & blunders, the eBookMan still shows great promise for those who like their devices on the small side.
* The t.BOOK (http://www.t-boook.com) At long last a British e-reader is on the horizon. From Davtel a paperback-sized device weighing 430 grams (around half a pound U.S) is promised soon. No computer interface will be needed, as you'll be able to download books on the phone via an internal modem and be charged to your British Telecom account. Chic designer Philippe Starck has been engaged to jazz up the exterior.
Specs. include a lithium ion battery giving over 40 hours reading per charge, high-resolution backlit screen & 4 megabytes internal flash memory. The proprietary software is a stand-alone, unfortunately, with security provided by Cambridge Uni's TEA (Tiny Encryption Algorithm). Davtel plans to work only with established publishers, and to premier the e-reader (price not yet available) in London, Toronto & New York in (northern) autumn 2001 - but don't be surprised if it's a little late.
*Italy too has now joined the growing throng of e-reader makers. It looks like the issue is becoming one of national pride! Their Myfriend resembles the French Cytale Cybook, but is smaller (17.5cm x 19.4cm x 2.5cm = 7" x 7.75" x 1") & lighter (800g =28 oz). Like the Cybook it can read open source OeB files, but has Microsoft Reader installed. Myfriend has an internal SIM smartcard. It will store about 80 plain text books, and has a built-in modem for Net download. A colour reader, it can also be used for email. The lithium-ion battery disappoints in reported charge life however.
Makers IPM are also developing a range of junior e-readers. There's the Kidzbook " with sounds, music, pictures and animation" which will allow for taking notes and keeping a diary, and the more sophisticated Knapzack. See: http://www.ipm-net.com/eng/prodotti/appliances/myfriend/index.htm
Korea's hiebook (see October 2000 newsletter) differs markedly from the Gemstar e-readers by having an open (OeB compatible) reader format. With authoring, publishing & software development tools to be freely available, this black & white device will start from the ethical high ground, and may go on to wow the market with quality features at a hopefully more reasonable price (the makers promise only that it will be "less expensive" than the REB-1100).
Add-ins like an electronic organiser & an MP3 player that works much better then the one in the Franklin eBookman add further lustre to this snazzy silver device. With a screen almost as big as the REB models and memory which can be expanded to 128 MB, this paperback-sized e-reader weighs only 300g (10.5oz). Operating systems supported are Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME and NT, with Mac OS currently under development.
The stylish hiebook, already building a wide Asian support base, is to be launched in the USA "in the third quarter of 2001", & has a chance of capturing sales that the Rocket e-Book was rapidly staking out prior to Gemstar's take-over.
Comment: If the hiebook lives up to its promise, Gemstar's e-book strategy could rapidly crumble into ruin unless that company changes course to make a cheaper, more open device available.
Japan Many are wondering what has become of the slow-to-develop Japanese E-Book Initiative.
In October 1998 a mammoth E-Book Japan consortium was formed, comprising major publishers plus electronics, communications, broadcasting and retail companies. With public funding (oh happy days), a trial involving 500 e-reader units and 5,000 e-titles began in November 1999. The aim was to find out by field testing what people really wanted in this area, and just what system of access will actually work.
E-book content for the trial was centrally distributed by satellite and through the Internet, with downloading provided at twenty initial kiosk sites in book and convenience stores. The trial e-reader was a paperback-sized unit with XGA-resolution, while content was in a provisional stand-alone image/data format called EBJ.
As an image-rich format (with audio and video provision) this approach to content was very memory-intensive. So the reader units included a PCMCIA slot increasing storage capacity to 40 MB with use of an Iomega CLIK! Drive & Disk.
Well they're still working away folks, & finally displayed a prototype at the Tokyo International Book Fair in April. Toshiba have developed the screen - or rather plural, as it'll include two 19cm (7.7") high-resolution LCD screens, so that the locals can adequately indulge their passion for manga comics. The Evil Empire is in there already, with Microsoft Clear Type now part of the project. Not satisfied with the prototype however, the Japanese are now doing further work on reducing the e-reader's weight and improving the battery life.
Comment: No need to re-invent the wheel guys. Just glance across the sea to what the Koreans have already beaten you to some time ago.
Casio PA-2400W A Windows CE device which would make a fairish quality e-reader for those who can afford it (costs $US800). With 8MB memory it also plays audio files, has a lithium-ion battery lasting about 15 hours per charge and weighs 13 oz (369g).
TouchPC Voyager A very sturdy, bobby-dazzler of a new device which apparently can be dropped, drop-kicked, submersed, thumped and slopped over repeatedly with all manner of gunk without damage. Would that humans were so resistant! Has 64MB memory plus up to 32MB CompactFlash, a good-sized colour 6 inch screen, runs on Windows CE & you can install a variety of e-reader software such as the Palm Reader or MobiPocket. Large easy-to-push buttons are a feature & it will inter-connect with just about everything. Truly! A superb release, but you won't like the price when available, so far just described as "expensive". Make me an inexpensive one of these and you're my ever-loving sweetie-pie, honest.
LeapPad A younger kid's (recommended ages 4-9) 10-by-11-inch device, selling in USA only at present. From Amazon.com for only $US50! The interactive e-books aren't so cheap though at $US15 each. Described as a talking/reading book with an interactive "magic pen", this is a great fun learning tool for the littlies. Kids can use it any way they like, from just listening to the multi-voice story to actively learning stuff, e.g. by touching the pen tip to any word or letter to hear it pronounced, or to a picture to hear a sound effect. Stimulating for any kid & a boon to those struggling to learn to read. Games, maps, musical instruments and more extend the magic. Could make a blissful birthday or Christmas present for a coming generation who will outshine we digital pioneers before we know it.
The yBook: new, free e-book reader software, released by gung-ho site Spacejock Software http://www.spacejock.com). Yo yBook runs on Windows PCs, where it will read .txt or html files and re-format them into a 2-page on-screen 'book' with pages that turn when you click them. Cute.
Read on your phone! Customers of Versaly Games- they distribute interactive games to mobile phones on wireless networks - are intending to offer downloads of shorter Fictionwise.com e-books to read on soon-to-be-available 3G (third generation) colour mobile phone screens, using Microsoft Reader. Cheesh! Note that the latest phones are about to get bigger again, & are starting to resemble PDAs (electronic organisers). You read it first here, folks. (Back)
Library Insight
Adobe One Can Oh Be?
*Adobe released Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader 2.1 on April 25. The upgrade features include font rendering technology CoolType, an interactive dictionary, and the ability to give or lend an e-book if the publisher has permitted it. Earlier in April a new version 5.0 of the popular Adobe Acrobat was marketed. A highlight is that Version 5 adds XML-like tags to PDFs, making it easier to access & reflow text, & to reformat for hand-held Palm size devices.*Adobe also released on May 29 Acrobat Reader for Palm OS, available free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html. Plus earlier Adobe Content Server 2.0, an encryption and distribution system for PDF documents. They're mulling over putting out an Acrobat Reader version for the Pocket PC too.
*The busy Adobe team also launched "Adobe eBook U", another push in it's determined "battle of the titans" against rival Microsoft. Read how Adobe is making a bid for the University e-materials market in a trial run with .pdf "textbooks, course packs and customised course readers" at nine U.S. tertiary institutes (see http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=1461&nl). Adobe certainly deserves credit for putting in the hard yards, but this newsletter cautions all of hitching your wagon solely to any one format.
*All in the family is the word at ebrary, where Adobe luminary & former CEO John Warnock has joined the company’s board of directors, alongside his son, ebrary’s cofounder and CEO Christopher Warnock. Ebrary has yet to launch, but announced an expansion of projected services to make its content library available to "channel partners" through a service called ebrarian. Universities, search engines, or other Web sites will be able to license ebrary’s software to include links to ebrary content, or may use the company’s PDF-based (surprise!) pay-as-you-go model with their own content.
Meanwhile twelve university presses, including Columbia, MIT & Stanford, will join with ebrary to make some of their publications available for ebrary's new free-to-read but pay-per-page-to-download-or-print service, with the first texts to be up by early July 2001. (Back)
*Rattled by some recent Adobe advances, Microsoft scored a coup in late February when "e-commerce enabler" Booksite (http://www.booksite.com) teamed with Lightening Source to assist independent bookstores to sell e-books from their own websites - but only in Microsoft Reader format. Booksite's founder Dick Harte also called for e-book information kiosks in bookstores, but baulked at the idea of physical bookshops offering direct e-book downloads to live customers.
Comment: Let's beg to differ. There's a strategy of mutuality available in which physical bookstores and the Net can complement each other in making books available to everyone in the way they want. If you can order a printed book off the Web, why shouldn't it be possible to buy an e-book in a bricks and mortar bookstore? And Microsoft's ruthless " be one or zero" digital approach is a prime example of the ultimately stupid, cut-every-throat-but-ours philosophy which is holding back the flowering of the e-book. See the exaggerated but relevant movie "Anti Trust" folks, and be aware.
*Amazon.com has now launched into e-books, selecting the MS .lit file format as its preference in a second bookstore win for Microsoft. But MS joy muted in April when Amazon balanced its act by adding nearly 2,000 titles in the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader format.
Meanwhile Microsoft's shareholding in DRM company ContentGuard is another MS finger in the e-pie. But paranoia is damaging Microsoft's own prospects due to its suspicion of other companies with which it proposes co-operation. Thus the Franklin eBookMan launched without MS Reader yet due to Microsoft unwillingness to allow Franklin's own DRM plug-in instead of its own.
At the recent London Book Fair Microsoft spokespeople ostentatiously leaked rumours of an alleged "killer device" they're to release real soon, which they claim will tip the balance for e-publishing. But which way guys, & who will it slay? Given the Evil Empire's excessive talent for self-promotion this column will remain sceptical in the meantime.
A nice change to all this was MS slipping into good guy mode in a partnership with New Zealand company Pulse Data (http://www.pulsedata.co.nz) to provide electronic books for the blind. The MS Reader is now integrated into the Kiwi innovator's Braille Note PDAs, which can then either play a downloaded e-book as an audio file or transform it into electronic Braille. This opens the possibility for a sudden huge increase in texts available for the sight-impaired, an inspiring example of the transformative possibilities of the digital book. (Back)
More than 25 formats now exist for reading e-books, and they continue to proliferate. While diversity is healthy in expanding possibilities for the digital information and entertainment medium, mutual incomprehension among software and hardware and the lack of any consensus about digital rights management are the big stumbling blocks today. Indeed the current e- world has been characterised with some truth as a bunch of headless chooks running amuck. The medium itself has the brightest future imaginable, but the most important task of the next two years will be not so much to resolve technical problems as to find common ground on the social and strategic issues which underlie them. This newsletter will have lots more to say on this subject in the future. (Back)
Major booksellers W.H. Smith are setting up an e-book store online, to sell titles in Microsoft Reader to start with, but likely other formats later. They're launching around late August with about 1000 titles.* Again from W.H.Smith on May 25, news of a chain of U.S. airport e-book kiosks offering 25 fiction and non-fiction best-seller titles on the spot. Way to go! *Adobe is now offering more than 200 e-book business titles, available from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com.* E-bookstores Fictionwise, CyberRead & Booksurge will be ready to offer books in the hiebook format when that Korean device is sold in the USA later in the year.*
Palm announced March 20 that the handhelds giant has acquired Peanutpress.com, a successful e-book publisher and distributor, from fleeting owners netLibrary. The Peanut Reader will be renamed the Palm Reader & ship with the Palm 500 series; it'll also be downloadable for all Palm devices running Palm OS 3.0 or higher.* E-Ink shows off its progress so far at the Society for Information Displays conference, San Jose, 3-8 June. Electronics giant Philips is boosting them up with handy change of $US7.5 million. They're tied in with Motorola & Lucent too, with Xerox fulfilling the role of deadly rivals.* Questia now has 35,000 books available in its online subscription service for students, launched January this year, and has added journal articles. But it has also put the brakes on its huge digitisation project and laid off half its staff. Business has been slow so far, but the Questians hope it will pick up in the new semester as they improve their promotion strategies. * MightyWords is now to sell its e-books through Amazon.com.*
FlipBrowser, from the site of the same name, won a "Best of Show" award in L.A. for its "hybrid Web browser, photo album and multimedia presentation tool". "The Flip" can present the Web in book-like form & enables the creation of multimedia FlipBooks to show off your artistry online* Sony has demonstrated a new display medium called "organic electroluminesence" or OEL, which is apparently better than LCD and may possibly be used in future e-readers. The screen pixels emit light instead of filtering it. To be available 2003. *Other new screen technologies on display recently include liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS), inorganic electroluminescence (EL), tiled LCD panels & of course plasma screens. Plasma is apparently already semi-old hat as a "new" technology even before most people are aware of it! *HarperCollins have launched an e-book imprint called PerfectBound & plan to release 100 titles this year in REB, Microsoft & Adobe formats.* E-publisher website Bookmice has reopened under McGraw Publishing Group." Meanwhile small but popular e-bookstore Gemini Books announced its closure on June 1st for personal reasons.
* The Yanks are coming! OverDrive Inc announced June 1 a global Content Reserve Network to sell secure e-books from US publishers, internationally but initially in Europe. Since the beginning of May 2001, over 250 U.S. & international publishers have joined the Content Reserve network. European e-Book retailers are releasing English titles from US publishers such as Random House, McGraw-Hill and Time-Warner Publishing while US booksellers are preparing e-boutiques to sell titles in French, Italian, Swedish and other European languages. *ebrary has scored the entire, now digitised collection of the Yale University Press, thousands of works, for its forthcoming, online pay-only-to-copy-or- print service. Wowie-bowie! (Back)
*Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.net) is broke! For many years they've provided non-copyright e-books (about 3,000 now in total) including many of the great classics, free on the Web, with a mammoth voluntary labour of love. Now they need some funds to pay their bills, as the two universities previously supporting them have withdrawn assistance (hiss, boo!). Widow's mites and above gratefully accepted by cheque or international money orders at:
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Avenue
Oxford, MS 38655-4109
U.S.A*Aussie E-nitiative: Sagas On the Way
E- authors, a free plug for Jon Jermey & Glenda Browne (http://www.ebookindexing.com) who will professionally index your e-book with hyperlinked topics. Samples on their site are Religions of Ancient China and A visit to Iceland. Hmm, Zen and the Art of Battleaxe Maintenance?
*In the last newsletter we reported e-readers in libraries in 18 U.S. states. This has now risen to 22 states.
* Illustrating the possibilities inherent in the digital medium is an e-novella Opening Day, by Les. Standiford (available from LiveReads.com). As well as the read you get an interactive baseball game, rare snapshots, oodles of hyperlinks and a good dollop of background information. But uh-oh, it has ads too - let's watch that tendency doesn't get out of hand! (Back)
OZONeBOOKS is an Oz "publishing house, eBusiness Marketing & Technology Company" based in Sydney (but with some mysterious Russian connection). http://www.ozonebooks.com.
Le Livre Virtuel, for those who think un livre electronique sounds better en francais. News, views articles, forums and more. Formidable, mais oui, at http://www.liberation.com/ebook
Cloudy Mountain Books. Pleasantly named e-bookstore with a pro-public library management. Two extra points for that at http://www.fictionforest.com
CyberLibrary. Japanese e-bookstore, has a free Cyberbook reader to download. Check out "Avon", their intriguing video browser too. English also spoken at http://dance.infobee.ne.jp/CyberBook
Alexandria Digital Literature. Sci Fi & Fantasy e-bookstore and more, in plain ol' HTML. With my hero Martin Eberhard as an adviser, how could they be ignored at http://www.AlexLit.com
African Digital Library. Addressing third world information imbalance by offering free access to anyone living in Africa, this netLibrary-supported initiative lives at http://AfricaEducation.org/adl
Awe-Struck E- Books. Great name, but love-struck would be more accurate, as romance novels are their biggest genre. HTML, REB, Palm, eBookman, and MS Reader formats all available.
Swoon on over to their site at http://www.awe-struck.net/
Encyclopedia Mythica. Myths & legends, gods and demons of both sexes, not to mention things that go bump in the night. You name it, they're packing it online at http://www.pantheon.org/mythica.html
Medieval Writing. The way it was. Australians Drs John & Dianne Tillotson made this site, which showcases impressive & often beautiful manuscripts & much more at http://medievalwriting.50megs.com
*Got a story? If you have an e-book story you feel is worth mentioning, please email it to: brucep@acon.com.au
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