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Issue date: July 28, 2000

Readers see the light of e-publishing on the Rocket eBook

By Leslie K. Martin

Last month so many eager readers--more than 400,000--tried to download copies of Stephen King's latest novella from the Web that they jammed the hosting Web servers. The message seemed clear: readers liked the idea of having instant and personal access to the latest best seller.

In the future, it's likely that readers will peruse their favorite adventure or romance on a device such as the Rocket eBook by NuvoMedia, a company of 50 employees based in Mountain View. "Electronic publishing is a whole new revolution that's happening very quietly. Most people are unaware of it," said Glenn Sanders, community relations manager at NuvoMedia. "It's going to radically change the world."

Sanders, a former English professor, believes that e-books are

"the new technology for the next 10 years" and created the eBookNet.com Web site in 1998 as "an information clearing house and community center for people involved or interested in e-books."

NuvoMedia, which was founded in 1997, purchased the Web site last year and hired him. The firm was bought in January 1999 by Gemstar, a provider of electronic television program guide services, which also bought NuvoMedia's leading eBook competitor, SoftBook Press Inc., a company in Menlo Park that produces the SoftBook Reader, a larger device that targets magazine and newspaper readers.

NuvoMedia launched Rocket eBook in 1998. The eBook is a hand-held pocketbook-sized electronic reading device. The current standard model weighs 22 ounces, is loaded with four megabytes of memory (which can be upgraded to 32), and has a 4 1/2" x 3" LCD back-lit touch-sensitive screen.

The eBook can store about 100 books (or 56,000 pages of text and graphics). It comes with a cradle charger that links to both PCs and Macintoshes through a serial port. A single charge provides about 20 hours of reading (40 if the backlight is turned off). The eBook lists at $199 and is available through BarnesandNoble.com and Powells.com.

The next Rocket eBook model, due to be released this fall, will have a bipolar monitor extending battery life. NuvoMedia hopes to list it at a price below $100.

According to Sanders, NuvoMedia actually loses money selling eBooks plans to make up the loss through content distribution; the company says it recently made content distribution agreements with "virtually every major publisher in the United States."

"A customer goes to BarnesandNoble.com and says, 'I want a certain book,'" Sanders explained. "BarnesandNoble.com sends that order to the NuvoMedia server. We create the file, encrypt the file keyed to a specific device--each device has a separate I.D.--and then we send it to the customer. It's transparent; we're invisible."

Currently, Rocket eBook owners can purchase and download more than 4,000 titles from BarnesandNoble.com, Powells.com, and Rocketlibrary.com. PC users (but not Mac users) can download and test the free e-Rocket software at rocket-ebook.com.

Sanders said a customer only has to buy a title once. "You have an account on our server. You never lose the content. Once you pay for it, it's yours forever."

As in the music industry, concerns have arisen about the loss of copyright protection stemming from the evolution of file formats that allow free content downloads. Encryption helps somewhat to prevent authors' works from being pirated, but the codes are nonetheless vulnerable to hackers.

After polling online readers, Stephen King decided to challenge traditional publishing, encryption, and copyright issues head on. On Monday, King released the first installment of an unpublished work, "The Plant," directly from his own Web site.

"My friends, we have a chance to become Big Publishing's worst nightmare," King explained at the site.

King asks readers to pay a dollar for each installment. If at least 75 percent of his readers pay for his work, he will continue to post installments.

Customer testimonials on the Rocket Web site praise the eBook for its portability, hands-free reading, and relative ease on the eyes. At approximately 106 dots per inch, the eBook monitor resolution is twice that of a normal PC screen. The page orientation can be turned in any direction, so the software can be customized for right- or left-handed users. Another advantage, an owner wrote, is being able to read in a dark car or in bed without additional lighting.

Michael Kelleher, an author from northern California, published his last book electronically and has written a Web article highlighting the pros and cons of e-publishing.

With traditional publishing, Kelleher wrote, "Brand names carry the day, quality is often a relative concept, and middlemen are everywhere." E-publishers, he feels, will negotiate author contracts and are flexible and open to new ideas; on the other hand, fledgling e-publishers still lack mainstream exposure and distribution channels.

Because the software uses an HTML format, magazines, newspapers, Web pages, and personal documents can also be saved to the eBook. Sanders said this means students no longer have to carry a backpack full of books. Professors and business travelers can load the eBook with presentation materials.

"It's a device that is optimized for reading. It's a whole new consumer category. It does what it purports to do very well," Sanders said.

There are no publishing costs for printed materials, but Sanders doesn't expect major publishing houses to drop prices for electronic book versions. "They have to renegotiate contracts. That takes time and money, so it hasn't been happening," Sanders said.

"Will publishers, editors, etc., disappear? I don't think so," Sanders said, noting that editors make things saleable by screening and polishing submissions. "An author may sell an unpolished work to a certain customer one time, but if it's not good, that customer will not go back to that author," Sanders said.

He added that because unknown authors don't sell much on their own, they need "publicity, promotion, marketing" and "connections."

Speculating on the future, Sanders said that the business of publishing might undergo a shift. Instead of doing everything themselves, publishers may "attract editors and converters and publicists and offer those services to authors as maybe a mix-and-match package."

Leslie Martin is a writer who covers Silicon Valley business. She can be reached at LMARTIN@AOL.COM.