E-Book Currents

Citation

Falk, H. (2002), "E-Book Currents", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 19 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2002.23919aae.001

E-Book Currents

Hard Times at netLibrary

In mid-October netLibrary announced to its customers, partners and friends that it was up for sale because of lack of investment funding. The company has been running at a loss during its initial period of developing operations and revenues. At last count an archive of over 37,000 titles was in place, including material from over 100 publishers, and over 5,500 libraries and other organizations were being served by the company.

netLibrary employees were told that they were welcome to continue to work, but that pay was being drastically cut to $360 per week for all, including executives. The company is not sure how many employees will choose to return. Founded in 1988, netLibrary had as many as 400 employees, until lay-offs began in March 2001.

At present, access to netLibrary e-books continues under existing contracts but some services, such as promotional material, have been suspended. As for the future, netLibrary may still be sold. If not, OCLC acts as an escrow agent for netLibrary contract holders. Compact disks containing copies of all the e-books contracted for by each customer continue to be deposited at OCLC. In case all netLibrary operations should be suspended, libraries and other organizations with netLibrary contracts will receive these compact disks and then will have to make their own arrangements to serve their patrons with the e-books on the disks. Contract agreements relating to copyright protection will remain in force, but the means that will be available for enforcing copyrights are unclear at this time.

Restriction Law in Europe

A directive recently passed by the European Union is designed to make it a criminal offense to break or attempt to break copy protection or access control systems for digital material such as music, videos, e-books, and software. The directive is known as 2001/29/EU. National governments of the EU have 18 months to incorporate the directive into their national laws. For example, the directive is slated to become a part of UK law in 2002. Under this law, copying of printed materials by teachers for their students, or by blind people making Braille copies, now fully legal, could become illegal.

Rummaging for Copyright Breaches

The USA act, approved by the US Senate and House of Representatives in early October, includes a section that makes it a crime to break into computers and cause damage of $5,000 or more per year. Conceived as an anti-terrorism measure, this provision has special meaning to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and other protectors of copyrights. Under previous US law there was no prohibition against breaking into Web sites and disabling their activities when they seemed to violate copyright laws. This, despite the fact that such break-ins can result in costly damage to unrelated disk files. The RIAA wants to preserve the right to this kind of invasive action, and has proposed an amendment that would exempt copyright holders from penalties under the USA Act.

Gemstar Prefers Tight Controls

The Gemstar-TV Guide company is concerned about maintaining very tight control over the sale of its e-book titles in order to prevent copyright violations. Gemstar devices (REB 1100 and 1200) have no Internet browsing capabilities. Users can only download Gemstar titles over a secure modem connection set up between a Gemstar reader device and Gemstar's computer servers. When they purchase a Gemstar formatted e-book, users must take the extra step of connecting to the Gemstar server, which maintains their personal library and gives purchased titles to them once their identity has been established. For example, if a Gemstar e-book is purchased from the Barnes and Noble Web site, users must first complete the purchase of the title at that site using a computer other than their REB device. Then the users must employ their REB device to establish a separate connection with Gemstar in order to download the title. That process generates a lot of user complaints. No surprise, then, that Gemstar has announced its e-books will no longer be sold at BarnesandNoble.com. Perhaps it would be wiser for Gemstar to use a less arcane acquisition procedure.

Permanent Tags for E-books

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) tags are being offered to e-book publishers as a means of controlling their products. The DOI is a digital tag that can be permanently attached to files. When a consumer or researcher clicks on the DOI tag, a menu of options appears which can include whatever items the publisher desires, such as bibliographic data, book reviews, author information, supplementary material, copyright restrictions, sales or marketing information. For example, The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook is now being offered as a free e-book by McGraw-Hill http://63.236.98.202/mcgraw-hill. Clicking on the book's DOI tag allows the reader to buy a print edition, and points to free excerpts and book reviews. The International DOI Foundation (www.doi.org) has certified three firms to provide DOI registration and technical support to publishers.

Students Favor E-books

A study at the University of Rochester Rush Rees Library compared use of e-book and conventional versions for 17 titles offered as course reserves. Students opted for the e-book versions by a margin of 3 to 1, and few found any discomfort in using the e-book versions. The study concluded that an ideal e-book system for use with course reserves would allow for simultaneous use of each title and would permit downloading of the texts to portable e-book viewing devices.

At Spoon River College in Canton, IL and Eureka College in Eureka, IL students have been testing the RCA REB 110 e-book reading device and the Franklin eBookMan reader as tools to study The Awakening by Kate Chopin and Winesberg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. So far, the participants say they like the fact that the eBookMan device lets them record verbal notes on their reading material.

CliffNotes on Handheld Computers

The first e-book versions of CliffNotes are now available in Palm Reader format. The notes are published by Hungry Minds, a John Wiles & Sons company. Palm Reader runs on handheld devices and on Pocket PC devices. The newly released CliffNotes e-book editions of classic works include Romeo and Juliet, The Scarlet Letter, The Odyssey, Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, Moby Dick, King Lear, 1984, The Red Badge of Courage, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Prince, Sophocles, Oedipus, Pride and Prejudice, Life of a Slave, and Measure for Measure. CliffNotes e-book editions on contemporary works include Of Mice and Men, The Once and Future King, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Beloved, Killer Angels, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Bluest Eyeand Sula, The Color Purple, and The Crucible. Many other titles are available and sell for about $5-6 each at http://www.palm.com/ebooks.

Chinese Students Get E-books

At 20 schools in Beijing, China, students are beginning to use texts in the form of a "Green Ebook" produced by the Beijing Botong company. The company director sees the e-books as a supplement to, rather than as a replacement for, conventional textbooks. Students in Singapore started using e-books in April 2001, and plans are to have some 500 schools in China using the "Green Ebook" by the end of 2001.

E-books for Teenagers

Random View Books, a Random House program, publishes e-books aimed at middle grade and young adult readers. Their list initially makes 17 titles available, including titles by well-known authors such as Gary Paulsen, Christopher Paul Curtis, Patricia Reilly Giff and Philip Pullman. The titles sell for $3.99 each and are available through online vendors like the new Yahoo! eBooks Shopping Web site. Random View Books plans to continue to publish new titles, as well as classic backlist favorites, during each publishing season (Spring, Summer and Fall). The next collection of titles will be available during the Spring of 2002.

New E-publications

A list of over 3,000 e-book titles is currently offered by Palm Digital Media for display on Palm hand-held devices. The titles are available at the www.palm.com/ebooks Web site. Best-selling titles include two fantasy novels by Stephen King and Peter Straub, a business title, Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch and John A. Byrne, three science fiction titles, two espionage-thrillers, a horror title by Anne Rice, and The Coming Anarchy, a non-fiction title by Robert D. Kaplan.

Wall Street Journal subscriptions are now available for display on Franklin eBookMan hand-held devices. Users can get The WSJ delivered daily via the Internet to their desktop or portable computer, then transfer it via cable to their eBookMan device. A subscription for three months costs $14.95. The cost for six months is $29.95.

The Dark Nile by Jesse Kornbluth is being offered as a serial novel sent to subscribers at no cost via e-mail. The story is written to be told over a period of 40 days and consists of e-mail messages the characters in the novel send to each other. Subscriptions are available by submitting your e-mail address at the www.darknile.com Web site. Descriptions of the three main characters are e-mailed immediately to subscribers.

In tune with the times, the Time Warner e-book site www.ipublish.com is seeking military science fiction stories of up to 10,000 words for the e-book edition of its Dogs of War anthology that will be available in e-book form sometime in 2002.

Hand-held Bargains

Buyers of various Palm hand-held devices can now get, as a bonus, a free 16 megabyte expansion card and $250 worth of coupons for added expansion products. These products include a road atlas, a dictionary, and hardware such as a digital camera, modem, GPS navigation device, and keyboard. The price of the Palm m505 color hand-held device has be reduced from $499 to $399.

Franklin eBookMan hand-held devices are now available at lower prices. For example, the Franklin EBM-901 device list price has been reduced from $179 to $149; with a mail-in rebate of $50, the Net price is now $99. Other models have been similarly reduced. Software for eBookMan devices now includes the MobiPocket Reader, which allows display of e-books published in Palm (Aportis doc) format. Some 4,000 titles are available in this format at www.franklin.com and www.mobipocket.com. In addition, MobiPocket Reader is capable of reading .prc, .txt, .htm, .html, and .pdb files so users can download news from the Internet and documents from many other sources for display on the handheld device.

Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC

Users can get a free copy of Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC from the download page at the www.adobe.com Web site. With this software and previous versions of Acrobat Reader, e-books formatted for the reader can be viewed on hand-held devices (including PalmOS-based devices and Pocket PCs) and also on virtually all popular personal computing operating systems (including Window, Mac, Unix and Linux). The latest Pocket PC devices that can now use Acrobat Reader include the E-115 Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia EM-500, iPAQ H3600 and the Jornada 545 and 548. Like Adobe e-book reading software for other devices, Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC provides bookmarks, thumbnails, zooming, "go to page," text selection, and viewing annotation. It also offers page reflow technology that allows e-books to be viewed more easily on different sized devices with different screen resolutions.

Backlist Conversion in Jamaica

Have you been wondering how all those printed books are being converted to electronic form? In Montego Bay, Jamaica, some 200 e-book editors have been added to a center operated by OverDrive (www.overdrive.com). There, book manuscripts are being edited and the immense backlists of publishers such McGraw-Hill, Random House, and Harper Collins are being converted to formats for e-books and print-on-demand electronic publishing. The choice of Jamaica for this facility is based on the fact that the country is the largest English-speaking nation in the Caribbean and has educational and technical programs that provide quality candidates for careers in electronic publishing. Jamaica and Cleveland, Ohio (the OverDrive home base) share the same time zone (EST), so the US and Jamaican production teams can work in sync with each other. Jamaica also provides a beautiful and warm climate for visits by company officials and clients.

Howard Falk(falkho@msn.com ) is an independent consultant based in Bloomfield, New Jersey, USA.