E-Book Currents

Citation

Falk, H. (2001), "E-Book Currents", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918dae.001

E-Book Currents

Howard Falk

Diverse uses for electronic text publications continue to develop in the form of medical reference works, instructional technology, promotion of printed books and newspaper publication. An e-book club has been launched. New e-book reading devices continue to appear on the marketplace and traditional book publishers are enthusiastically investing and experimenting with e-book editions.

Medical References in E-book Format

An agreement to produce 2001 e-book editions of E/M Fact Finder and The Physician Documentation Handbook was announced by Ingenix, publisher of print versions of these medical reference books, and Franklin Electronic Publishers, producer of the e-BookMan handheld reader. E/M Fast Finder ($24.95) is designed to help physicians assign Evaluation and Management (E/M) codes. The Physician Documentation Handbook ($64.95) sets out the information and nomenclature needed for patient records. A bundle of the two e-books will sell for $74.95. A version of the Franklin e-BookMan reader suitable for display of these e-books has 16MB of memory and a backlit screen for clear viewing under strong lighting conditions. With this handheld reader, physicians can have their publications conveniently available at the point of care.

E-books Popular in Canadian Colleges

A study sponsored by McGraw-Hill Ryerson (Ontario, Canada) found that over half of faculty members find that using instructional technology tools is an extremely or very important part of their work. E-books were cited as one of the major tools. Most consider e-books to be less expensive than traditional textbooks. Features of e-books that were cited as advantages included their ability to be quickly updated, ease of customization, usability, and promotion of improved communication between faculty and students.

"Dreamcatcher" Gets E-book Promotion

Visitors to the Web site of Time Magazine were able to read long e-book excerpts of Stephen King's new novel Dreamcatcher at no charge starting in March 2001. Simon & Schuster Scribner's published a printed version of the book in March 2001. The publisher gave Time permission to carry the excerpts in three installments, just previous to the release of the printed book, with the expectation that readers who liked the samples would be likely to buy the book itself. Under the agreement between Time and Scribner's, Time will get a portion of revenues generated when Web site users click on a Barnes & Noble button to order the printed book. To enhance the reader experience, "Dreamcatcher" Web site excerpts were accompanied by music, graphics, and streaming audio spoken by actor Jeffrey DeMunn.

New York Times Digital Edition

By the end of 2001, the New York Times will be available in a digital edition that displays its pages on computer screens in a format designed to closely replicate the experience of reading conventional paper editions of the newspaper. Internet versions of the Times have been published for several years, but the new digital editions will offer a number of important advantages. The digital versions will allow readers to see a full-page display and then to zero in on particular stories by using their mouse. The story material can be resized as desired and can appear in extra large type for sight-challenged readers. Advertisements that appear in paper versions will be faithfully reproduced in the digital displays and will contain clickable links to advertiser Web sites and other Web addresses cited in the digital text. All the text in digital editions can be searched with keywords. Readers will also be able to download digital editions of the Times to their own computers for viewing offline. The full metro edition of the Times will be available in digital versions for viewing anywhere in the world where Internet connections are available. The economics of digital newspaper publication are very favorable. A paper copy of the Times costs about 60 cents to produce and distribute, but these costs are substantially less for the digital edition. Both single digital copies and digital subscriptions will be sold to readers. An Austin, Texas company called NewsStand will convert Times print page files into format for digital display. The digital file for a typical hefty Sunday Times will take about 20MB of compressed storage. NewsStand is working with several other newspaper publishers in the USA and abroad with an eye to producing similar digital editions.

E-book Club for Online Magazine Readers

Slate, the online Web magazine, is offering its 3.48 million readers an e-book version of the magazine. Slate began publishing its contents in Microsoft Reader format in mid-2000. That was followed by publication of an ebook anthology of Slate materials titled The Slate Diaries and later by the e-book The Road to Chadville: Campaign 2000 as Seen from Cyberspace. A survey of Slate readers found that 68 percent said they wanted to view the magazine on their Pocket PCs. Based on these experiences, Slate has announced that they are launching an e-book club. Readers who sign up for the club will receive an e-mail each month listing available e-books. One of the first e-book club offerings will be the e-book "Bushisms", which details the frequent mispronunciations, malapropisms and mangling of the English language by President George W. Bush. Members of the e-book club are being offered a free sample of "Bushisms", a $100 rebate coupon for a Casio Pocket PC, and discounts on e-books at www.barnesandnoble.com

E-book Devices Proliferate

According to a survey of electronic retailers, about ten million Palm handheld devices ­ all capable of displaying e-books ­ are now in the hands of users. In addition, three million Handspring Visor devices equipped to display e-books have been sold, along with about 750,000 e-book-capable PocketPC hand-held devices. There are also about 100,000 Gemstar REB e-book devices currently in readers' hands. The most popular e-book reader software for desktop and laptop computers is the Adobe Acrobat Reader with about 160 million users worldwide.

The newest e-book reader, now scheduled to be available in the third quarter of 2001, is the Hiebook, a handheld device that weighs about 10.5 ounces and has a screen that measures 5.6 inches on the diagonal. The Hiebook screen is backlit for visibility in bright environments and will display 16 shades of gray. Buttons along the left side of the device are used to advance pages up or down or to change e-book files. Buttons along the right side control audio recording and playback of MP3 audio files. A dial on top of the device controls screen contrast. The Hiebook is powered by rechargeable NiMH batteries or by standard AA alkaline batteries. Batteries can be recharged from 110- or 240-volt outlets. With MP music playing, the batteries will last for over ten hours. The reader supports bookmarks, notes, underlining, drawing, searching, hyperlinks and footnotes. The price of the Hiebook device has not yet been announced, but it is expected to be competitive with existing e-book reading devices.

Three models of the Franklin e-BookMan reader began shipping in February 2001. The EBM-900 with 8-MB memory sells for $129.95; the EBM-901 with 8MB memory and a backlit display sells for $179.95. The EBM-911 with 16MB memory and backlit display sells for $229.95. The Franklin reader is available at Staples stores, from amazon.com and through other retailers. In addition to displaying e-books, the e-BookMan has a built-in voice recorder and can play up to 28,000 hours of digital spoken audio. Users who subscribe for a year at $12.95 per month will receive two audiobooks per month and a $50 rebate on the price of the reader. The audiobooks are available for downloading from www.audible.com that offers a collection of audiobooks by authors such as Stephen King, John Gresham, and Frank McCourt.

Publishers Taking the E-book Plunge

HarperCollins, one of the few major conventional book publishers that have held back from entering the e-book marketplace, launched their PerfectBound imprint for global publishing of e-books at the end of February 2001. With this move, HarperCollins joins Simon & Schuster (with its e-book line), Random House (with its AtRandom.com imprint), and Warner Books (with its iPublish.com e-books). The first PerfectBound titles to be published will be Pride before the Fall by John Heilemann and Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. Thirteen added titles were scheduled for March 2001, and about 100 titles in all are expected by the end of 2001. The e-books will be priced at a 20 percent discount off printed book prices. Initially the emphasis at PerfectBound will be to reproduce existing HarperCollins printed editions in e-book format.

PerfectBound e-book releases will be used to test responses to a number of e-book marketing and publication techniques. For example, Gao Xingjian's Nobel acceptance speech will be appended to the e-book version of his book, and an interview with Joyce Carol Oates will be included with the e-book version of her novel Faithless. The PerfectBound schedule for publishing three e-books from Raymond E. Feist's The Riftwar Legacy calls for the e-book versions to be released a week before hardcover sales begin. The release date for the e-book version of Sharp's Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell is timed for seven weeks before release of the hardcover version and the e-book version will include an added exclusive short story. Readers of The Vendetta Defense by Lisa Scottoline will be offered free downloads of the first three chapters before the release date of the e-book.

Complaints about E-book Costs

Lawrence Kirshbaum, Chairman of the AOL Time Warner Inc. trade publishing unit, finds complicated publishing problems with e-books a "big surprise" and complains of the high cost of translating texts from one electronic format to another. When errors crop up during translations, Kirshbaum says, texts have to be proofread two or three times. He called the translation process a "slow and painful" one, and complains about the prospect of high advertising and publicity costs for e-book titles. Is Kirshbaum trying to give the impression that the excessive prices being asked for e-book versions of print titles are completely fair? If so, he is probably convincing no one but himself. A recent survey by Arthur Andersen finds that high prices for e-books and for the reader devices used to view them are stunting the growth of the e-book market. About 10 percent of those surveyed said they had purchased at least one e-book during the past year, but more than half of those surveyed said that price was their main reason for not purchasing more e-books. Over three-quarters said they believe they should be paying no more than paperback prices for e-books, and many felt that half the price of a paperback was sufficient. As for reading devices, it appears that any price above $100 makes the purchase painful for potential users.

Why Questia Is Not for Libraries

Questia, the Internet service that provides access to a liberal arts collection of about 50,000 online e-books, has no plans to offer institutional subscriptions to libraries and other organizations. The reason is that the publishers with whom Questia has contracts frown on site licenses for the service because they feel that this would lead to reduction in print copy purchases by libraries. What Questia does offer is individual subscriptions to students, faculty and others. An individual annual subscription costs $149.95, and a 48-hour individual subscription costs $14.95. Questia views their online service as a complement to library collections, believing that no library can fully service peak demands for specific books. Because of class assignments, there may be hundreds of students who are trying to get access to a particular book on a given day, exceeding the number of copies available to the campus library. In contrast, the Questia service can offer online access to an unlimited number of copies of any of its texts. However, there is a great difference between viewing a page at a time on a computer screen and being able to read through the entire text of the bound volumes that libraries supply. Questia believes that these two types of use complement each other. When students identify books of interest by viewing paragraphs of relevant material, they can go to a library to confidently order the books they need. Questia is actively seeking input from the library community on the titles that should be included in its online collection. They have set up a librarian advisory council that includes key people in collection development and are also taking recommendations from faculty members.