Looking to kickstart the market for eBookMan, its newly released handheld reading device, Franklin Electronic Publishers announced content deals with St. Martin's Press and AlexLit, as well as deals with MobiPocket, a French e-book reader and technology firm, and with DRM and e-commerce specialist Reciprocal.
The Franklin eBookMan is a multiuse, handheld device that comes in three models that can be used for reading e-books, voice recording, listening to music files and audiobooks, and offers address book and organizer applications.
Barry Lifsky, president and CEO of Franklin, told PW, "We're in the early days of e-books and all device makers realize that we have to make content available quickly." The agreement with St. Martin's will make 300 to 500 backlist titles in fiction and nonfiction available to eBookMan users, probably by the early fall, according to Jeff Gomez, SMP's e-book and print-on-demand manager.
Franklin's deal with Alexandria Digital Literature (www. AlexLit.com), an independent e-book publisher, will allow AlexLit to convert its 700-title backlist into the Franklin e-book reader format.
MobiPocket (www.mobipocket.com) is a French firm that produces an e-book reader that will run on any PDA operating system. As Franklin works to get publishers to produce content in its eBookMan reader format, the manufacturer is also looking to companies like MobiPocket to get more content into the market quickly. Besides producing e-book technology, MobiPocket aggregates content; its deal with Franklin will make more than 1,500 MobiPocket titles in multiple languages (more than 1,200 are in English) available to eBookMan users.
MobiPocket is partially financed by Viventures Partners, an investment fund created by Vivendi Universal, which recently acquired Houghton Mifflin. And Franklin's agreement with Reciprocal will integrate Franklin's DRM technology with Reciprocal's e-commerce and digital distribution services to allow users to purchase and download content from a wide variety of online retailers.
Lifsky told PW the company has shipped about 40,000 eBookMan devices. Sales have been "okay, not great," he said. He blamed slow sales on early technical problems that in turn slowed promotion. But Lifsky expects promotional efforts and sales to rise in the fall.
The devices are available through electronic appliance stores and office supply outlets (Staples, Best Buy, The Electronic Boutique among them) as well as through Amazon.com. He hopes to entice real-world bookstores to sell the device and speculated about the possibility of bundling the device with content, "so that stores can offer something different," said Lifsky. "Bookstores are trying to figure out where they fit in the e-book mix, and we need to be in bricks-and-mortar bookstores."
