Look Ma, no pages

Marc C. Fitzgerald

Could it be true that reading books, newspapers, magazines, or documents—some of which may be a favorite pastime—could become extinct as technology continues to revolutionize how we think, work, and play? The day is upon us; new technology is allowing us to read at the speed of a microchip. These new mediums for reading are commonly referred to as e-books or readers. They are relatively small, handheld gadgets that plug into a cradle attached to your computer or modem. You can download textbooks, novels, or documents from Web-based publishers (1-21).

You can carry a small library wherever you go. The readers have a capacity of 1500 to 500,000 pages of text and graphics. Batteries can provide up to 40 hours of uninterrupted reading whether in the office, at home, or on the go. Being digital, e-books can be browsed, searched, annotated, underlined, linked, and referenced in ways that are impossible with a traditional book. In addition, readers have immediate access to information without having to pay for shipping. And yes, e-books are PC and Mac compatible!

Not since Gutenberg has there been a revolution of this magnitude in the book publishing business. According to the Computer Shopper Magazine (21), the public perception of the e-book has been extraordinarily positive, and it is growing in popularity. Moveover Oprah Winfrey book-of-the-month-club enthusiasts, there's a new book club in town! The club fee (i.e., the retail price of the reader) ranges from $299 to 599. However, as with all new technology, the prices eventually will decrease as the item grows in popularity. The e-titles cost about the same as their print counterparts.

As of November 1, 1999, NuvoMedia (22) broke the price threshold by reducing the cost of its Rocket eBook to $269. It only took six months for prices to fall. The price reduction reflects the increasing consumer demand and falling technology costs.

Does this sound like history repeating itself? Remember how much a laptop, a cell phone, a pager, an audio CD player, or a VCR cost when they first became available on the consumer market. You almost needed to get a second mortgage to afford some of these luxuries. Now you can buy most of them at much more reasonable prices. Can we honestly function without them?

Aside from the price issue new technology creates, there is also the age-old debate over how increasingly dependent we are on technology. From the horseless carriage to the Internet, there have always been early adopters and hard-line resisters. In each instance, popular acceptance is often as much a function of technology as itis of marketing—and e-books are no exception. Give yourself 5 to 10 years.

The other popular brands of e-books are the SoftBook, from SoftBook Press (23) and the EB Dedicated Reader from Everybook, Inc. (24).There's a number of software packages available to enhance the features of the e-books. Adobe (25), Microsoft (26), Librius.com (27), and Infinite Ink (28) are just a few of the companies offering software for e-books, handheld computers, and PCs.

NIST inaugurated its first Electronic Book Workshop last year (29). Back by popular demand, NIST organized the Electronic Book '99 Workshop: "The Next Chapter" (30), which was a great success! The workshop was held on September 21-22, 1999, at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD. About 600 people attended the two-day event, which featured 35 speakers representing various parts of the electronic book industry. The workshop showcased almost 30 exhibitors. Critical issues that emanated from the program included e-commerce solutions for publishers, copyright issues, impact on education, challenges of publishing journals with e-book technology, Braille readers for e-books, and next-generation displays for e-books.

With the conference over, NIST keeps the ElectronicBook '99 Web site (30) active so that it may continue to serve as a resource for the electronic book community. Not only will this Web site be an archive of the 1999 conference (with copies of the biographies of speakers, and possibly transcripts, copies of PowerPoint files used, and video of the conference in a streaming format), but it also will serve as a bulletin board for upcoming events such Electronic Book 2000 and provide progress reports on the NIST Braille Reader.

The film industry has the Academy Awards, Broadway has its Tonys, and the traditional world of print journalism has the Pulitzers. The emerging field of electronic books now has the Frankfurt eBook Awards. In October, Microsoft announced its founding sponsorship of the Frankfurt eBook Awards for original electronic works. The awards are intended to recognize literary and technological excellence ine-publishing and boost the supply of high-quality electronic books available to the public.

Microsoft and four major European publishers are also planning to develop electronic book titles for the European market. In agreements with 00h00.com (31), Havas in France (32), Mondadori in Italy (33), and Penguin Books in the United Kingdom (34), Microsoft will help each company make French, Italian, and English e-book titles available online or in CD collections.

For those who are eager for more information on e-books, eBook Connections (eBC) is gathering e-publishing industry statistics via a Web survey. Their goal is to make accurate and current in-formation available to the public. The survey addresses questions eBC and others have been asked about e-publishers and e-books. The questions are from readers, writers, media, industry, etc., so the survey covers a variety of areas (35).

Imagine how this technology may revolutionize how we spend our leisure time and how our children learn in school—not to mention how much lighter their book bags can be and the thousands of trees that will be spared from the paper mills. Hey, Ma, guess what I want for Christmas?

(1) http://www2.awl.com
(2) http://www.barnesandnoble.com
(3) http://www.bloomberg.com
(4) http://www.comtex.com
(5) http://www.harcourt.com
(6) http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/home.html
(7) http://www.wiley.com
(8) http://www.mcp.com
(9) http://www.mcgraw-hill.com
(10) http://mitpress.mit.edu
(11) http://www.nytimes.com
(11) http://www.penguinputnam.com
(12) http://www.prentice-hall.com
(13) http://www.powell.com
(14) http://www.random.com
(15) http://www.simonandschuster.com
(16) http://www.stmartins.com
(17) http://www.wsj.com
(18) http://www.twbookmark.com
(19) http://www.washingtonpost.com
(20) http://www.zdnet.com
(21) http://www.zdnet.com/computershopper/edit/cshopper/content/9903/387612.html
(22) http://www.rocket-ebook.com/enter.html
(23) http://softbook.com
(24) http://www.everybook.net/ebthreespreads.htm
(25) http://www.adobe.com
(26) http://www.microsoft.com/READER/press/timeline_future.htm
(27) http://www.librius.com
(28) http://www.infiniteink.com
(29) http://www.nist.gov/itl/div895/isis/ebook98.html
(30) http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/ebook99/
(31) http://www.00h00.com
(32) http://195.115.13.192/en/html/0/home.asp
(33) http://home.mondadori.com
(34) http://www.penguin.co.uk/Penguin/
(35) http://www.ebookconnections.com/surveys/epub/information.htm
(36) http://mitpress.mit.edu/Cover/1999/oct/etopia/about.html
(37) http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/issue/23_99a/focus/ty/foty0123_1.htm

Note: All the URLs were last accessed on November 4, 1999.

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