PW: E-Publishing

Bookface Offers New E-Model
Ad-supported browsing, book sales and copyright security from Web startup
Claiming to offer book readers "unprecedented access to quality content and an enhanced reading experience," while offering publishers better security for their texts viewed online, Bookface Inc. has launched a new kind of publishing Web site that is somewhere between a portal and an online magazine.
According to Tammy Deuster, CEO and co-founder, "Bookface's goal is to be the ultimate e-reading destination, going beyond the current reference and business-title driven sites." Deuster told PW the site will offer free browsing, interviews with celebrity authors, writing contests, book reviews and previews, and online communities ("virtual book clubs," said Deuster) in popular genres.
Advertising will provide the revenue, Deuster said. Ads can be placed around a screen's worth of book text, and advertisers will pay for the privilege of being near text that people want to read. "We can use advertising support to give readers free access, while making more money for publishers and authors. It's a different type of revenue sharing. We'll only pay when people read something, but we'll pay a lot on the popular things that people read."

More Revenue Streams
In this model, Bookface collects revenues from advertisers and delivers them to the author and publisher for each page that a customer reads. If a reader decides to buy the book after browsing, Bookface connects the user to Amazon or bn.com. In this way, Bookface generates revenue from the sale of the bound book, plus ad revenues based on the browsing period. Bookface still generates revenue and profits if a reader reads the entire book online without buying it.
Bookface calculates that even at very low ad rates, "free" browsing could easily create greater revenue than the sale of the book.
"As a cost-per-hour of entertainment, books are vastly undervalued," Deuster said. "Movies cost about $4-$5 per hour. Recorded music is about two to three times that. Most books run well under 50 cents per hour of entertainment."

More Security, Too
According to Deuster, Bookface provides increased security as well. "The browser-based Bookface service and technology enables publishers to reach online readers while protecting valuable content from being copied, redistributed or altered," she said.
The book files are encrypted for storage and transmission, and only decrypted for display on the user's screen. The book is not stored on the user's hard drive--Bookface's server delivers each page to the user's screen as fast as it is requested, and each page is discarded when the next page appears. Users never have a copy of the complete text in their computer. And the display-only technology d sn't allow readers to cut, paste or alter the text.
"Because browsing is free, we lower the incentive to break copyright," Deuster says. "We'll make it easy to view the text, and easy to search for a given word, phrase or page. We'll make it easy to buy the text through standard online bookstores. And we'll provide all the performance data on the books to publishers so they can market their books more effectively."
Len Liptak, Bookface's director of marketing, noted, "Recent research on Internet usage suggests a strong link between savvy Net users and entertainment-related activities and products. Reference content and computer functionality are must-haves, but content with mass-media and entertainment appeal is going to drive demand."
Bookface has 25 employees in San Francisco, New York City and Boulder, Colo. The firm is currently in negotiations with publishers to license books for the site. Time Warner Trade Publishing is reportedly among the initial investors. The company expects to have its first titles available in the third quarter of this year. Bookface will be demonstrating its technology at BEA in booth 5013, and Deuster looks forward to meeting publishers at tables 53 and 68 in the Rights Center to license more titles.

New Media Firms Eye the School, Textbook Market
Although media and consumer interest in e-books reached a frenzy following the release of Stephen King's trade e-book Riding the Bullet, both traditional publishers and upstart e-publishing firms are looking for ways to market their digital texts and services to school systems and the higher education market.
NuvoMedia's Rocket eBook and Softbook, owned by Gemstar Inc., two of the earliest proprietary e-book devices on the market, are both looking to add educational components. "We have consistently said education represents an enormous opportunity for electronic books. Textbooks are too heavy, they go out of print and they are not updated. We are aiming to solve those problems," said Tom Morrow, a spokesperson for Softbook Press.
Softbook Press has announced two official pilot programs, one with the state of Texas and one with the Seimens technical company in Austria; and NuvoMedia is conducting its own pilot educational programs. So far, students seem to be enthusiastic. "It's another gadget, something new, and they are wowed by it," said Cynthia Moon, a spokesperson for NuvoMedia.
California-based New Media Books (www.newmediabooks.com) is a software developer looking to work with traditional print publishers. The company's software integrates traditional text with supplementary multimedia content. NMB's platform can search for both content and context; it not only finds all uses of the word "book," for example, but anything related, like "bindings" or "Gutenberg."
New Media Books has been developing this technology for 10 years and recently patented it. Now the company is looking to form cooperative partnerships with textbook and trade book publishers. "I view our technology as a logical connection between traditional print publishing and fully digital e-book publishing," said John Williams, the firm's founder.
NetLibrary, which has expanded its activities from supplying libraries with e-books to serving online book retailers, continues to look for opportunities in the educational market. "Our goals are to use this new media to enhance the learning experience," said David Melacon, chief marketing officer at NetLibrary.
Last month NetLibrary set up an education division and announced the acquisition of MetaText (www.metatext.com), a Florida-based company that works with publishers to create online educational environments designed specifically for their titles. Founded by David Lindrum, a former college instructor, MetaText uses existing textbooks to create customized online course packs that are digitally enhanced with such features as teacher/student message boards, searchable annotations, glossaries, footnotes, pronunciations and searching.
The MetaText format also provides tools to the teacher for creating syllabi; custom-publishing tools for online course plans and online student quizzes and reports to monitor class progress. Lindrum checked off the benefits of MetaText to textbook publishers: cost reduction, easy content production, "integrated" grading and communication features and, ultimately, no more used textbooks.
The MetaText platform is compatible with distance-learning platforms such as Blackboard, WebCT, Eduprise and eCollege. The company currently has partnerships with John Wiley & Sons, W.W. Norton and the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition.
--Leslie Kang
Kang is a freelance writer on electronic publishing.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro Makes the Move to E-Book
New e-book publisher Hidden Knowledge of San Jose, Calif. (www.hidden-knowledge.com), has launched its first list with a new novel by popular fantasy and science fiction author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. The company is planning to publish primarily in the history, philosophy, bibliophilia and travel niches.
PW: How did you decide to write Magnificat?
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro: The kicker for me is when a character starts telling me what happens next. In this case it was Charles Cardinal Mendosa [a prominent character] and I said yes sir, whatever you say, Charles. I just had no idea how big the book was going to be! They should sell it by the pound.
PW: At 635 pages, it is much longer than most e-books. Was that an issue?
CQY: Michael Ward [publisher of Hidden Knowledge] was happy to have something sizable. The length was a problem for traditional publishers. That, and they didn't know what slot to put a religious alternate-history book in.
PW: How did you choose Hidden Knowledge?
CQY: Mike is an old friend and I liked his publishing strategy. He showed me where his break-even line intersected with my royalty line and then we worked from there. It's certainly a better royalty than I get in print. It was great fun to participate from beginning to end. Usually writers get separated from the work very early on but in this case it was sort of hand-in-hand all the way. I know that for many people if it d sn't have covers it's not a book. Still, with the current shortening of the in-print life, e-books are going to be the backlist source and that will make a big difference in letting the buying public get what they want.
PW: People often consider the quality of the writing in e-books to be lower than in traditional bound books. D s it concern you that Magnificat may be considered that way?
CQY: I'm a genre writer. People have been sneering for years--that's their business. People who read it, if they like it, wont care. If people insist on being bigoted, that's their problem.
PW: What do you see as the future of e-books?
CQY: It's inevitable. We might as well meet it with good fellowship. It can work very well if it's not essentially used as a vanity press or a technology showcase. Big change will happen when someone comes up with the equivalent of the Walkman--the Bookman. The day may come when a full-service bookstore will have books on display and you can choose the format: disk, printed and bound, audio, etc., or you bring in your Bookman and they go "twang" and you're all set up.
PW: So, what will happen to traditional publishing?
CQY: It may become more esoteric but there will always be a place for books. We're going to be stumbling about for a while, which is confusing, but healthy, and I hope that the e-publishers don't try to truncate the process so much that they duplicate the traditional publishers. So long as you're inventing a new venue you might as well invent some new rules as well.
--Laura Ciporen.

Mary Higgins Clark G s Digital

Simon & Schuster, the house that released Stephen King's Riding the Bullet in e-book format, is turning another of its popular writers, suspense author Mary Higgins Clark, into an e-book author. S&S will release an e-book edition of Higgins Clark's latest novel, Before I Say Good Bye, on May 25, and will make her entire backlist available in all e-book formats. This is the first time that a major publisher has the released the entire body of work of a bestselling author in downloadable electronic editions.
The backlist includes 18 novels and three short story collections. Among them is her first novel, Aspire to the Heavens, a biographical novel about the life of George Washington, which has been out of print. All the Higgins Clark e-books will be priced at $9.95 and will be available for desktop computers, laptops, PDAs and proprietary readers.
Carolyn Reidy, president of S&S trade, said that Higgins Clark has been a leading lady in every print format and the step into e- books was "altogether appropriate." Higgins Clark said, "Nothing could be more thrilling than knowing that all my works are instantly accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world."
Participating e-book vendors include netLibrary, Softbook, NuvoMedia, SoftLock.com and Glassbook.
--Calvin Reid

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