May 2001
May 1
MightyWords.com adds
a new distribution partner, announcing that its catalog of digital titles, predominantly
works on business and computing, will be available at a store linked to the more than 160
sites operated by internet.com, an Internet and information technology network.
Digital Goods, a
content marketer for e-books, lays off most of its staff and begins to shut down, saying
that it was unable to get funding to maintain operations. The company's statement: 
The Jerusalem Post reports
more departures at Versaware.
Wired.com's M.J. Rose reports on the
apparent closing of Rocket-Library.com and also writes about the problems
writing sites have had raising money through subscription drives. Steve Outing,
featured in Rose's article, shares the lessons he learned from his pledge drive, giving
advice to other site owners who might want to try the approach. His article is published
at Content-Exchange.com, the site he runs. Articles: Rose and Outing.
May 2
Completing a stock transaction
announced on September 27, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. acquires a 38.5%
stake in Gemstar-TV Guide International: Dow
Jones and Reuters.
"E-Book Devices Yet to
Hit Bestseller's List," Gemstar leads the market, but has sold only 60,000
e-book readers since it began releasing them last fall. The company has 4,000 titles
available for its devices, says CEO Henry Yuen.
Adobe (adobe.com)
plans to shut down its U.S. offices for the first week of July, reports AP. The
cost-cutting measure will save the company about $4 million.
"Pulp Friction: Random
House v. RosettaBooks": an article from the American Lawyer on
Michael Boni of Kohn, Swift & Graf, the Philadelphia law firm representing e-publisher
RosettaBooks in the case brought against it by Random House.
Seybold Reports' E-Book Zone
has two short articles on the cutbacks and other recent changes at e-library netLibrary
and digital rights management company Reciprocal; following each report
is the site's analysis of these developments: netLibrary and
Reciprocal.
May 3
The Jerusalem office of e-publishing
service Versaware appears to have laid off all of its remaining
employees, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Authorlink.com editor in chief Doris
Booth interviews Steve Riggio, vice chairman of Barnes & Noble.com,
on the company's new e-book imprint, Barnes & Noble Digital. Booth has published the
interview with a lengthy analysis of the e-book market. One of the news
items in Booth's report: Barnes & Noble will no longer stock titles from
print-on-demand publishers in its stores, according to a letter sent to one such publisher
in January. Articles: interview
and report.
Next fall, Harcourt College
Publishers will begin to offer textbooks that will link the books' text to the
Web through print codes that can be read by the handheld CueCat scanning device, available
for free from RadioShack.
Kendra Mayfield of Wired.com writes
about Octavo, a Silicon Valley firm that uses digital technology to
produce PDF files of rare books. The company was founded by John Warnock, who co-founded
Adobe.
Stealth Press, a
publisher of hardcover editions of out-of-print novels, has launched a viral marketing
campaign that will test whether sending a free chapter of a book by email as a PDF file
will get buyers for the hardcover title.
May 4
"Commentary: E-Books
Remain Niche Reads," the Meta Group, a research and consulting firm on
information technology, contends that e-books will remain a niche consumer market for the
next several years.
The Narrative Press
(narrativepress.com) launches a collection of first-person adventure books, offering works
by pioneers, archeologists, and explorers in a paperback and a Microsoft Reader edition.
May 7
Random House responds
to e-publisher RosettaBooks' brief; the case goes to court tomorrow: Publishers Weekly
and CNET News.com.
Reporting on the Seybold Boston
conference, Publishers Weekly takes a look at Adobe Acrobat 5.0.
PW also notes that the next release of the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader
may feature reflowable PDF.
News from PW: Night Kitchen
has released its TK3 products, a multimedia authoring tool and a free
e-book reader; Princeton University Press is starting a program, Digital Books
Plus, that will let writers respond to readers and critics in a follow-up e-book
after their books' original e-book and print publication; Simon & Schuster Audio has
launched the first enhanced CD, also called CD+. The CD, Killing
Pablo, combines an audiobook with video footage, and is about the hunt for the
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Articles: TK3, Digital Books Plus,
and CD+.
Rough Guides
(roughguides.com) selects Texterity, a digital conversion service, to convert more than
twenty of its travel guides and phrase books into the Microsoft Reader format. The e-books
will support the Pocket PC and will be featured in Microsoft's demonstration of its
wireless and handheld device technologies, "The Mobile Experience Tour!" The
tour (May 3-July 1) will go to eleven U.S. cities.
The online library ebrary.com
is adding electronic facsimiles of rare documents from early American history to its
collection. The titles are from the PDF library of historical books prepared by the DSI
Publishing Group, a division of Digital Scanning Inc., a conversion and scanning service.
The works include George Catlin's North American Indians and the journals of the
Lewis and Clark expedition.
Colligo Corp., which creates
electronic books on history and art, releases a multimedia CD series, the ULTIMATeBOOK
(ultimatebook.com), for students. The first titles in the series: The Memorial War
Book, a text on the Civil War, with photographs by Mathew B. Brady, period maps,
illustrations from the era, and audio; Images of Stealth, a work on stealth
aircraft, produced in cooperation with Lockheed Martin; Pioneers in Brass, a
history of concert bands; and Mt. Baker, a title on the mountain in Washington
state, with vintage maps and photographs. A CD on the impressionists is forthcoming.
May 8
"Dilbert" cartoonist Scott
Adams self-publishes his first e-book, God's Debris, a 99-page story
about metaphysical questions. The e-book portal eBookAd.com posts an audio interview with
Adams, and publishes an article about the e-book, followed by Adams' press release. In the
release, Adams tells why he decided to publish the work exclusively as an e-book.
ForeWord Magazine launches a
fee-based review site, ForeWordreviews.com. The service will start next
month. M.J. Rose of Wired.com on some reactions to the concept of this new site.
Targeting the mobile business market, Adobe
(adobe.com) announces the availability of more than 200 e-book business titles that can be
read on laptops with the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader. The e-books are offered through
Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com.
May 9
Reports on the May 8 hearing in Random
House's copyright infringement case against RosettaBooks: Inside,
Internet World, and
the Washington
Post.
"Tales from a Modern Gold
Rush," an early employee of America Online, Julia L. Wilkinson, has
published an e-book about the company, My Life at AOL. Her book is available as a
PDF file and in print formats. The Washington Post article includes the terms of
her self-publishing agreement with 1stBooks Library.
Inside.com looks at trade publishers,
including AOL Time Warner affiliate ipicturebooks.com, that are hoping to
develop a market for e-books among young readers.
Children's book publisher Scholastic
(scholastic.com) and Microsoft launch an e-book science fiction series for children, Remnants.
The first work in K.A. Applegate's series will be available as a free e-book in the
Microsoft Reader format, and is being offered in five installments. The final installment
will be on June 25, ten days after the book's print publication. The companies' marketing
campaign for the e-book includes a sweepstakes to win one of ten Pocket PCs.
Fictionwise.com adds
e-reads' catalog to the titles it distributes. Founded by the literary agent Richard
Curtis, e-reads reissues out-of-print books by popular authors, such as Harlan Ellison and
Janet Dailey, in electronic and print formats. The company's catalog includes nearly 1,400
fiction and nonfiction titles.
Franklin Electronic Publishers
(franklin.com), the maker of the eBookMan, and Hungry Minds, the publisher of CliffsNotes
and Frommer's Travel Series, announce that they will make the study and travel guides
available for the e-book reader beginning this summer.
netLibrary
(netlibrary.com) signs distribution agreements with Coutts Library Services, which serves
the United Kingdom and North America, and with BTJ AB, which has offices in Scandinavia;
the companies will work to distribute the online library's e-books to the libraries in
their regions.
May 10
"Evolving E-Books Let
Authors Answer Critics," the New York Times on the recently
announced Digital Books Plus program from Princeton University Press.
New French e-book site: BooKenSTOCK.com,
a personal Web site with classic works from French literature available for free
downloading. The books are usually offered in a couple of formats, including PDF,
Mobipocket, and Microsoft Reader. The site has a forum on contemporary books and also
features a short e-book news section. The site:
May 11
Two useful articles in Pocket PC
Magazine: tips on how to create e-books in the Microsoft Reader
format and a step-by-step guide on how to access Audible.com's content on
a Pocket PC: Microsoft Reader
and Audible.
May 12
"The Future of Electronic
Paper," the technology's greatest impact may first be on handheld devices,
according to this opinion piece in ZDNet.
—Donnali
Fifield
Donnali Fifield
is the author of William & Wendell: A Family Remembered (Binary Books) and
the daughter and literary executor of William Fifield (The William Fifield Collection). |
 
Articles on e-publishing (archived PDFs of the Web
pages):
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