Electronic Publishing - Electronic Books

ELECTRONIC BOOKS

Electronic books, also known as e-books, became available at the retail level in 1998. That year, e-book readers—the lightweight, paperback book-sized electronic devices used to display e-books—were released by NuvoMedia Inc. and Softbook Press Inc. Both readers allowed users to highlight, bookmark, and annotate specific passages, and to search an entire document. Many e-books also were accessible via a standard personal computer (PC). NuvoMedia and Softbook sold a total of roughly 10,000 e-book readers in 1999. At the time, less than 5,000 titles were available electronically. Hoping to use advertising campaigns and licensing agreements to generate more of an interest in e-book readers, Gemstar International Group Ltd. paid $400 million for both NuvoMedia and Softbook Press in January of 2000.

At roughly the same time, Barnesandnoble.com and Microsoft began working on their own e-book reader for PCs, and another e-book hardware manufacturer, Glassbook, disclosed similar plans. Via an agreement with publisher Simon & Schuster, celebrated author Stephen King released a new novella as an e-book that spring. Several security glitches allowed Internet users who had paid for the book to download multiple unauthorized copies. However, despite concerns over copyright infringement issues such as this, a few publishers persisted with various e-book trials. For example, Simon & Schuster released e-book versions of Mary Higgins Clark novels in May. The following month, the first Spanish language e-book was published. In July, Stephen King bypassed traditional publishers by selling chapters of his new novel, Ride the Bullet, on the Internet for $1 apiece. Within 15 hours of its release, more than 40,000 readers had downloaded the first chapter.

By the end of the year, only 25,000 e-book reading devices had been sold, and e-book sales were less than $5 million. Along with sluggish demand, the e-book industry was also forced to deal with limited supplies. E-book availability was growing at a much slower pace than e-book reading device makers had anticipated. In March of 2001, the number of e-books compatible with Gemstar's RocketBook—the indus-try's leading platform—had reached only a few thousand. Concerned that e-book sales might undermine print sales, particularly on new releases likely to make the bestseller lists, many publishers were only willing to offer electronic versions of classics like Moby Dick and Romeo and Juliet.

Incompatible formats posed another problem for the e-book industry. By the end of 2000, each of the three e-book industry leaders—Gemstar, Adobe, and Microsoft—was working to position its format as the industry standard. According to a November 2000 article in The Atlantic Online, "the future of reading is presently being held hostage in a computer 'standards war' where competing companies try to ensure that their proprietary technology becomes the toll-taker at the gate. Most publishers and retailers now offer every e-book title in at least two incompatible formats, sometimes three, and it may not stop there." This left many publishers leery about committing to any single format, and many decided to wait and see which format proved dominant before investing in the e-book industry. For the same reason, consumers resisted spending money on e-book reading devices, most of which could read only one format.

Copyright issues also proved daunting to many publishers. Despite legislation like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—which made the manufacture or sale of products designed to dodge copyright laws illegal—many publishers were unsure how to go about protecting copyrighted books offered electronically. At the same time, publishers unwilling to release electronic versions of their copyrighted books also worked to prohibit other companies from doing so. For example, although authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Parker granted RosettaBooks permission to publish electronic versions of their books, questions arose as to whether or not RosettaBooks needed to gain permission from Random House, the copyright holder of the traditional print books written by those authors. In February of 2001, Random House filed a copyright infringement lawsuit, the outcome of which is liable to have a considerable impact on the electronic publishing industry.

Although the e-book market has grown much more slowly than anticipated, some major publishers continue to pursue new e-book ventures. Many industry experts believe that the future of e-books is in niche markets, such as children's books, textbooks, and reference publications. According to a July 2001 article in PC Magazine, "the Electronic Document Systems Foundation predicts that the likelihood of people reading novels or even magazines digitally in the future is low. The chance that they will read digital reference materials, professional journals, and reports, however, is good."