The Seybold San Francisco 21st Century Publishing Seminar, held earlier this month, was a milestone in e-book history, as several of the industry's major players began to better understand electronic delivery's place in the publishing business.
"It's not about the Web; it's not about print; it's about publishing," show founder Jonathan Seybold steadfastly maintained, faced with criticism that the seminars had become too Internet-oriented at the expense of traditional publishing.
Early announcements from Xerox Corp. and keynote speakers Dick Brass of Microsoft and Fatbrain.com CEO Chris MacAskill (News, Sept. 6) had shown a new emphasis on software to facilitate delivery and enhance publishers' copyright security.
Subsequent developments reinforced these impressions. SoftBook Press of Menlo Park, Calif., announced an enhanced version of its SoftBook Reader, including Ethernet connectivity, more storage capacity and compliance with the Open eBook file format specification, additions designed to increase utility for business users. "Ethernet is the standard for corporate networking," noted SoftBook CEO James Sachs.
The additions earned the Enterprise SoftBook Reader, available by the end of the year for $699, one of only 20 coveted "Hot Pick" awards, the Seybold Publications editors' "must see" selections for new products at the show.
More on the Way
Several e-book companies whose products haven't been released yet also contended for media attention on the show floor. Adobe Systems' pavilion made room for demos of products from Everybook Inc. and Glassbook, which are the primary supporters of Adobe's Portable Document File (PDF) format as an electronic delivery system. Adobe and Everybook held a joint press conference to announce their partnership to distribute e-books in PDF, while EB evaluates Adobe's new PDF Merchant and Web Buy e-commerce software for retailers and customers, respectively.
According to Everybook president Daniel Munyan, EB should be among the easiest and safest e-books for publishers to distribute to. "Nearly 90% of all publishers either format or archive their titles in PDF now," he asserted, "so it's the de facto industry standard."
Not represented on the show floor but busily buttonholing media analysts was newcomer ION Systems CEO Jill Thomas. ION, based in Crystal City, Mo., is preparing to debut software that will automatically translate publishers' files among any of the dominant formats (PDF, HTML, XML, Open eBook), while guaranteeing secure copyrights and purchases.
Librius.com launched its Librius Internet Bookstore (www.books2read.com), offering full-text searches of more than 400 texts. Don Ledford, Librius's president, said that rapid developments in e-book technology had prompted the company to hold off production of its Millennium Reader while it worked on its software.
