E-Rookies Make The Big (BEA) Show
New companies at BEA offered range of e-biz resources
It may not have had the glitzy appeal of last year's hardware-heavy show, but BEA 2000 showcased several new companies trying to make themselves known in the crowded world of electronic publishing. Situated mostly in one corner of the convention hall, these firms often jostled for eyeballs alongside such better-known providers of e-services as netLibrary, ebrary, MightyWords and Versaware. (For more information on these companies and others, see News, June 12.)

One obvious way to get attention: glom on to Microsoft. Such is the strategy of Overdrive (www.overdrive.com), a Cleveland, Ohio, B2B company that offers digital conversion services to publishers. The company is responsible for making texts available on Microsoft Reader, performing a critical back-end function for a company that likes to be thought of as "a really good plumber." The arrangement g s like this: Microsoft d s the work of negotiating with publishers. Then Microsoft brings its licensed texts to Overdrive, which uses a program called Readerworks to convert titles. It then feeds the digitized texts back to Microsoft; which then turns around and makes e-retailing deals with e-tailers like Barnesandnoble.com

At the show, Overdrive set up shop in the Microsoft booth and reaped the benefits of its traffic. But Overdrive officials were adamant that the MS deal did not preclude it from working directly with publishers, though representatives did stress that it preferred to have others handle publisher negotiations.

Boston, Mass.-based Ebrandedbooks (www.ebrandedbooks.com) offers a straightforward e-publishing platform to both individual authors and businesse wishing to launch publishing programs or publish in-house documents. It offers 50% royalties and promotion for all titles--with one twist. Through its hybrid model, Ebrandedbooks.com will also offer print editions, using print-on-demand technologies, of any e-book that generates 100 downloads. According to its mission statement, EBrandedBooks.com "combines the most aspects of traditional book publishing of any e-publisher with the new capabilities and opportunities enabled by the Internet."

Ebrandedbooks.com promotes and sells its authors' books through an affiliate program it offers to other Web sites and to online book retailers. Its first line of print books, a series called Inside the Minds, targets Internet and business professionals. Titles include Inside the Minds: Venture Capitalists and Inside the Minds: Internet CFO's. The books are part of the company's own publishing initiatives.

Finally, NetRead (www.netread.com) is a San Francisco-based outfit that is developing an online hub for publishing "solutions" aimed at publishers, authors, booksellers, printers and others in the publishing industry. On the site, anyone from a bookseller to a literary agent can learn about the vagaries of online promotion, retailing and other aspects of the business. The company's most prominent feature is Webcaster, an online literary calendar that the company feeds to on- and offline media through Web portals like Yahoo!, Excite.com and to other strategic partners such as Small Press Distribution (www.spdbook.org), NuvoMedia (www.nuvomedia.com), Softbook (www.softbook.com), Printbid.com, Audible.com and others.
--Steven M. Zeitchik

Harper, Golden Join Kindle Park
With an infusion of funds from an investment group led by former Fox owner Marvin Davis and agreements with Golden Books and HarperCollins, ThinkBox Media (www.thinkbox.com) is well into the first phase of its scheduled August launch of Kindle Park (www.kindlepark.com). Brain Napack, ThinkBox CEO and founder, described Kindle Park as an Internet playground for families with children ages two to six. Kindle Park is a site where children and parents go together to learn, as well as a "place where children can go by themselves and have access to age-appropriate content," Napack told PW. The site is up now, but will launch this summer with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign.

One of its main attractions is full-text Web access to books from Golden and HarperCollins. The site will feature five to 10 titles monthly and will also offer interactivity. Customers can download a title as an e-book (initially only for the Palm OS) or buy the print edition. "Kindle Park is a promotional opportunity for publishers to showcase their books," Napack said. Everything on the site is free, "until you want to acquire it."

Kindle Park is only the first in what Napack, who had previously headed Disney Educational Publishing, said will be a series of virtual playgrounds, with MyBookClub.com, which will debut in six months, due next. The site will "create a community where seven- to 14-year-olds can discuss books and other issues," Napack said, adding that the company is looking for "a foundation publishing partner" to help launch the site.
--Jim Milliot

Vyou Gives Web Site Security
While much of the discussion about e-book copyright protection focuses on downloadable files, Vyou.com Inc., based in San Jose, California, has developed Vyoufirst, a unique content-protection software product that gives a company complete control of the viewing, saving and printing of every piece of content posted on its Web site.

"Most security protection involves encrypting files. That's different from Vyoufirst's approach--we do Web-content, not files. We work in real time on whatever is being displayed on the site. It's completely simple for the Web site and seamless to the end user," said Peter Levey, founder and CEO of Vyou.com.

Levy has experienced the frustration of having content stolen on theWeb. Several years ago, a competitor regularly stole information from his site and re-purposed it for its own site. "Twenty-five percent of our Web site was being reissued on their site, and we weren't getting any credit for it." All he could do, said Levy, was sue. "We got them to stop, but it was that experience of being so easily and blatantly robbed that led me to found vyou.com."

Vyou is a flexible technology and once it is installed on the Web server, the company sets its content access policies. These policies can be set for a part of a Web page or for an entire page. Also, the company can allow different kinds of viewers to access different policies, and if needed, the policies can also be directly scripted into the programming language of the Web page. The viewer is never aware of Vyoufirst, except during the first visit to a Vyoufirst-enabled page. Then the viewer must download a browser plug-in. After that, a viewer can to go any other Vyoufirst-enabled site. And if the viewer declines to download the plug-in, the company can set up an alternative policy for that viewer.

Vyou secured $9 million in first-round funding earlier this year. Among its current business partners are Casti Multimedia (www.casti.ca), a Canadian firm supplying technical information (including books, Web content and training courses) to engineers, and Marketfacts (www.marketfacts.com), which circulates consumer product information.

Vyoufirst prices start at $199 for 20,000 pages and go up accordingly for its custom-designed, advanced features package. For more information, visit www.vyou.com or call (408) 287-4200.
--Leslie Kang

Magex Offers E-File Security
Although its initial business efforts have been aimed at the music industry, Magex, a U.K.-based e-commerce and digital rights management firm, expects to offer its services to the book-publishing industry by this summer.

Working in partnership with digital rights management developer InterTrust Technologies, Magex (www.magex.com) offers both secure transmission of content via the Internet and a platform for tracking usage, payments and other data. InterTrust software provides the content-management and tracking functions in combination with Magex's Digibox Container, an encrypted digital "envelope" that surrounds digital content and carries its price and terms of usage. In order to access the content, users need Magex's software, which will be available for free download after registering.

Magex was launched in 1998 and has secured $80 million in first-round private funding. Major shareholders include NatWest Bank, its parent firm, and Universal Music Group. The company has also announced a deal with PublishOne (www.publishone.com), an online publisher of business and market research reports, to facilitate the sale and delivery of its financial content.

Andrew Farrow, head of business development at Magex, told PW that while the firm is currently focusing on the music business, Magex will market its services to both business and consumer publishers of all kinds. "Music-listening devices have had the same security problems as hardware for e-books. We'll be increasing our focus on e-book producers," he said. Magex also collects financial and usage information and provides around-the-clock account management.

Magex technology facilitates what the company calls "superdistribution," or viral marketing. Consumers can digitally pass Magex-protected content on to their friends without it shedding whatever restrictions the publisher has imposed. "It allows the Web equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing," said Farrow. "You don't want to stop that--you want to encourage it, as long as its protections are observed."

But will consumers want to pay for digital content forwarded from their friends? Farrow points out that the content will be high quality and that publishers will have great flexibility in deciding what kind of compensation they require. "It d sn't have to be money. Restrictions can be flexible. It can be money or information about the consumer or information and a discounted payment." He told PW, "Over time, publishers will grow more sophisticated about varying their offers. If one model d sn't work, you can change it without having to call all the books back."
--Calvin Reid

King to Self-publish New E-Book in July
Citing the popularity of his e-book Riding the Bullet and expressing a touching degree of faith in human nature, bestselling novelist Stephen King plans to release another e-book--this time in installments--and ask readers to pay on the honor system. It also appears he plans to offer the e-book without the help of Simon & Schuster, his old-media publisher, raising new questions about the ability of powerful authors to become powerful new media self-publishers

He plans to offer a serial e-book version of The Plant, an unfinished novella, unencrypted. Each installment will cost $1, with the stipulation that King will pull the story if too many people steal it.

In a letter to his fans on his official Web site, King notes that Riding the Bullet was hacked and posted for free within 24 hours of being made available. "I think the current technology is rapidly turning the whole idea of copyright into a risky proposition--not quite a joke, but something close to it," King wrote.

Adam Rothberg, a spokesperson for S&S, told PW that King had discussed the possibility of offering the e-book with the publisher. But Rothberg also acknowledged "there's not a lot that we know about it." Rothberg told PW, "Steve continues to surprise and amaze. Should he want S&S to help, we would be happy to be involved. He's always experimented, and this is very much in character." King's agent, Ralph Vicinanza, did not respond to PW's phone calls.

King polled visitors to his Web site and asked them whether the story should be made available and whether or not they would actually pay for it. More than 94% said they wanted the story and would pay. King seems satisfied with the responses, noting, "you seem to want it, so I am going to put it up." In a notice dated June 14, he said he would post an update on the project on July 8 and offer the e-book by mid-July.
--Calvin Reid
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