News

New E-book Offers From M-H, S&S
Jim Milliot -- 8/21/00
The last few weeks have seen a couple of traditional book publishers announce plans to release e-books to serve different marketing purposes.


Antitrust, politics from McGraw-Hill, S&S.
McGraw-Hill is releasing an e-book edition of U.S. v. Microsoft: The Inside Story of the Landmark Case simultaneously with the publication of the hardcover in a one-day laydown set for today, August 21. M-H says the book, by New York Times reporters J l Brinkley and Steve Lohr, is the first comprehensive look at the ruling in the federal government's decision to break up the software giant. E-books will be available in Glassbook, Rocket eBook, SoftBook, netlibrary, Peanut Press and Ibook formats. The e-book will also be sold through M-H's own e-bookstore, at www.ebooks.mcgraw-hill.com. The price is $24.95, the same as for the hardcover, which has a 75,000-copy first printing.
Simon & Schuster, meanwhile, has embarked on two initiatives. The company released Sen. Joseph Lieberman's In Praise of Public Life as an e-book on August 9, a day after the Connecticut senator was chosen by Al Gore as the Democratic nominee for vice president. S&S published the hardcover edition earlier this year. The e-book is priced at $21 and is available through Glassbook.com (Glassbook's PDF format), Nuvo Media.com (Rocket eBook), Peanut Press.com (Palm O/S), SoftBook.com and SoftLock.com. An excerpt from the book can read online at S&S's Web site, www.simonsays.com/ebooks.

S&S has also launched a new Star Trek series, Star Trek S.C.E., which will be published exclusively in e-book format. The first title in the series, The Belly of the Beast, written by Dean Wesley Smith, is already available for Microsoft Reader and will be available through other platforms in the near future. According to Judith Curr, president of Pocket Books, the new series marks the first time that content from Star Trek has been published electronically without a prior or simultaneous print publication. "Offering Star Trek S.C.E. exclusively to e-book readers is a perfect match of form and content," she said.The next two titles in the series ($5 each) are set to be released in September and October.