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- Column - All About E-books - |
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June 4/2000 Time Warner Takes the Ebook Plunge By Ebook Editor Lisa Eagleson-Roever On May 23, 2000, CNNfn published the announcement many ebook watchers had been waiting to read: a major publisher is taking the plunge into electronic books. Time Warner is creating an electronic-only subsidiary called iPublish.com. Budding authors waiting for a "trusted name" to join the fun had better hang onto their ASCII files, however: iPublish is not expected to make its official debut until the first quarter of 2001. No notice has been given yet as to whether iPublish will solicit the same types of books as Little Brown (general interest nonfiction but only non-genre fiction) and Warner Books (general interest fiction and nonfiction) or will branch out also to include more speculative works common in current epublishing offerings. iPublish.com will have three distinct "channels": iRead will showcase published works (short stories and essays by brand name authors chosen by Time Warner at first); iWrite will allow reader-members to submit and critique new works (the reader-members and Time Warner editors will choose which books are published electronically and possibly also in print); and iLearn will be a forum channel for Time Warner's authors and experts to share their knowledge with the site's users. [Time Warner's press release can be found on the iPublish website] While this is exciting news for ebook watchers, a number of questions immediately come to mind. How does a prospective author get to be a reader-member? (I've already e-mailed a form of that question to the iPublish.com editors.) Will this really be a way for writers to get discovered, or is this just a way for Time Warner to showcase its lesser-known authors? Zoetrope allows readers to submit short stories and novellas on-line for consideration - but before your work can be considered, you must read and critique five other stories. If unpublished writers can become reader-members, will Time Warner introduce a similar system? How much weight would the opinion of the reader-member group get compared to that of the Time Warner editors? What's to keep the Time Warner editors from selecting only those works by Time Warner authors? On the other side, what's to keep a writer from getting fifty friends to become reader-members just so they'll vote for his/her manuscript? There is also this question: Is the mainstream market ready for what Time Warner is offering? As Ebook Editor, I send out a list of ebook titles (from biographies to science fiction) to a pool of reviewers every two weeks and few are chosen for review. Why? It could simply be that it's coming up on summer in the Northern Hemisphere and that's traditionally when people spend less time inside since most view ebooks on their PCs. Or it could be as one reviewer explained to me: "I like real books I can hold in my hand." Will Time Warner find enough new material to suit both the market and its overhead? Time Warner also intends to publish a steady stream of current in-print and backlist books, and this is good news also. Until more details are revealed about iPublish.com, it's better news. To give you an idea of where the major print houses stand now with ebooks, a brief glance at Chapters.ca [a major Canadian bookseller online] shows some classics like Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Bram Stoker's Dracula, as well as the Coles Notes versions (U. S. readers, think Cliff Notes) of King Lear and Hamlet by William Shakespeare. I can see how students -always looking to cut down on what they must carry around - will gravitate to these to meet their required reading assignments. For business travelers looking to make the most of their time on plane flights, there is the McGraw-Hill Ryerson Small Business Solutions Series. Political and humor books are represented as well. For the most part, these are sure sellers. A sign of ebook permanence will come when books are routinely offered in both formats. Industry officials - and not just those from Time Warner - have been quoted as stating that initial publication in dual formats is their goal. Add to that the increasing forays into print-on-demand services (and even more interesting, the prospect of print-on-demand machines becoming commonplace inside bookstores), and we could be looking at a true revolution in book-selling. Will bookstores become like Service Merchandise, where you can look at the sample as much as you want but you buy the print copy from a warehouse in the back, the print-on-demand machine, or you download a copy onto your PDA, ebook reader, or read-write CD? If so, it might save the under-fire-but-spirited independent book-selling tradition. The "corner bookshop" may rise again as a cornerstone of modern society. -- Sources - Information for the above was collected from the following articles: "Time Warner adds e-books; Microsoft, Random House, Simon & Schuster also set e-publishing deals," May 23, 2000: 10:51 a.m. ET, New York, CNNfn. Press Release, Michael Kaminer Public Relations [email: michael@mkpr.com],New York City, May 23, 2000. "Time Warner to Create E-Book Publishing Unit," Tuesday May 23 3:51 a.m. ET, New York, Reuters. "Time Warner to Launch E-book Venture," Jennifer Greenstein, The Industry Standard, 05/23/00. "Time Warner Unveils E-Books," 05/23/00, New York, Reuters "Microsoft Reader Named Reading Platform for New Time Warner Online Publishing Venture," 05/23/00, New York, May 23, PRNewswire. "Time Warner to create e-book publishing unit-WSJ," 05/23/00, New York, May 23, Reuters. "New Initiatives Push E-Publishing to the Fore," Cavin Reid, Jim Milliot, & Gaye Feldman, 5/29/00, PublishersWeekly.com. |
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