Gist TV Listings Creates Print Publication Delivered Exclusively Via The Web

Electronic Books Don’t Make the Grade

Microsoft Eyes The Infant E-Book Market

Do we want to get rid of paper and read from pallets or e-book devices? Or do we want everything to stay on paper, just do away with traditional delivery channels. MWT has stories that address both of these questions:

Gist TV Listings Creates Print Publication Delivered Exclusively Via The Web

GIST Communications Inc., selected by Hewlett-Packard Company as a strategic partner for HP’s Instant Delivery service, announced plans to create and publish The Daily GIST - a customizable print magazine to be delivered to homes and offices exclusively via the Internet. The new ad-supported magazine, which reverses the long-established order of the publishing process from "print and distribute" to "distribute and print," is scheduled to launch in late 1999.

HP Instant Delivery is free Internet printing software from HP - the world’s leading provider of digital-imaging technology and products - enabling home and office users to explore creative and practical new applications of digital imaging. The software lets subscribers schedule automatic, unattended printing of online news and information. It automatically retrieves subscriptions by logging onto the appropriate Web site and printing the publication - without user intervention.

Featured publishers offer a compact, designed-for-print format that’s easy to carry and easy to share. CBS SportsLine, United Media’s Dilbert, MSNBC.com, National Geographic Interactive, Marvel Online and Slate magazine are among HP Instant Delivery’s featured publishers.

The Daily GIST, featuring personalized TV listings and related editorial content, will build on GIST TV’s established distribution of customized listings to subscribers of Instant Delivery (www.instant-delivery.com), HP’s free service that combines the convenience of paper with the personalization of the Internet to bring consumers a wide array of news and information. Users simply visit the Instant Delivery site to choose the content they wish to receive — when they wish to receive it — via their computer printer. The customized publication is then delivered automatically at the time pre-selected by the user.

"Traditional print entertainment guides will soon fade away because they can’t compete in the areas of timeliness and customization," said Jonathan Greenberg, CEO of GIST Communications. "With deadlines a couple of weeks prior to their appearance in subscribers’ homes, guides obtained through the mail, on newsstands or by newspaper delivery simply can’t keep up with the dynamic world of hundreds of digital TV channels, where schedules will be changing daily and even hourly. Delivery of print guides over the Internet, on the other hand, allows for constant updates, resulting in increased accuracy and a far more useful product."

"Whereas traditionally delivered print guides boast when they customize their listings down to specific cable systems," Mr. Greenberg continued, "an Internet-delivered print guide has the advantage of personalization down to each specific individual in each household."

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Electronic books are having trouble picking up speed on the information superhighway, according to a report. A study done by US investment banking firm Veronis, Suhler and Associates found that readers still preferred the hard copies to the electronic version. The report, released in Frankfurt during the world’s largest book fair, also found that it could take up to three years for electronic books to have a major impact on the publishing industry.

Spurred by discount online bookstores such as Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, consumers are sticking with the printed word rather than the computerized version.

The book-purchasing population consists largely of older individuals who are slow to embrace electronic innovation, the study said. Also, traditional books serve as collectors’ items and household ornaments, which electronic books don’t fulfill.

The report said that Americans spent $16.85 billion on consumer books last year, with a annual growth rate of 4 percent since 1993. The figure is expected to jump to $22.49 billion by 2003, with an estimated annual growth of 5.9 percent.

Online book sales reached $687 million last year, more than quadruple the $163 million in 1997. The figure is projected to reach $2.7 billion by 2003.

Here are two profiles of major contenders for future market share:

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Microsoft Corp. recently introduced a software application that it claims will make it easier for computer users to read text on their screens. The software giant is hoping the Microsoft Reader’s clean, uncluttered copy will be a driving force in the growth of the emerging electronic-book market, which has been slowed by skeptical consumers and high prices.

The product is propelled by Microsoft’s ClearType technology, which the company claims is able to make digital text as readable as the words on a printed page. The product also comes with a built-in dictionary and storage capabilities, tools to help users jump to any part of the document they’re reading, and a copyright-protection system.

The company expects to ship a beta version of the Microsoft Reader in the fall. It didn’t reveal what the product’s cost will be.

When it hits the shelves, the Microsoft Reader will be competing with two other electronic book devices - NuvoMedia’s Rocket eBook and SoftBook Press’s Softbook Reader. The Rocket eBook debuted in December and sells for $329, down 20 percent from its original price of $399. The Softbook Reader is $599 outright, or $299 plus a commitment to spend $19.95 a month for two years ordering books and magazines from Softbook Press.

In his keynote address at the recent Seybold conference, Dick Brass, vice president of technology development at Microsoft, claimed the Microsoft Reader will change the pace of book adoption with its high-quality typography. He also predicted that in less than 15 years, more than half of all book titles sold will be electronic. "Advances in computer displays and storage have made electronic reading possible," Brass said. "Microsoft Reader will make it widespread and profitable."

Microsoft appears to have higher hopes for its e-book entrant than analysts do for the overall e-book market. GartnerGroup, an information technology research firm, ranked electronic books as one of the "Top 10 technologies to watch in 1999," but at the same time cautioned that the technology is still in its infancy. "Prices are high, few titles are available and it’s too early to tell which growth track e-books will take," Gartner Group analysts warned in the January report.

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Fatbrain.com Inc. [NASDAQ:BNBN], an online seller of technical books, introduced a technology today that lets book publishers and individual authors sell digitized documents online and keep half the profits.

Fatbrain has lofty goals for its new service, which is called eMatter and will be available for purchase in late October. Fatbrain chief executive officer (CEO), Chris MacAskill, predicts that eMatter will take the publishing world by storm much as eBay and MP3 technology have influenced the auction and music arenas.

The company is targeting both authors who can’t find publishers for their material and publishers who want to deliver content that is often costly to print, such as out-of-print materials, training manuals and company research papers. EMatter also allows magazine publishers to resell articles that have been printed in previous editions.

Here’s how it works: an author who wants to publish a document uploads it to the Fatbrain.com Website as an Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Postscript, or text file, then sets a price, adds summary information and places it into one of thousands of subject categories. For each document sold on Fatbrain.com, the author gets a 50 percent royalty cut. To entice new customers, the company is offering 100 percent royalties on all work sold between October 18 and January 1. Authors will also be charged a monthly listing fee of $1 per title starting in April.

Publishing software maker Adobe Systems Inc. and Xerox Corp. also announced an alliance today aimed at helping publishers and authors sell books and publications securely over the Web. The deal integrated Adobe’s PDF (portable data format) with Xerox’s ContentGuard rights management software. Adobe also said it has updated its Acrobat software with a feature called "Web Buy," which lets users buy encrypted PDF files over the Internet.

One of the main hindrances to electronic book publishing is the fear of unauthorized use of the documents, said Kevin Hause, an analyst at International Data Corp. Tools that provide secure access will be key to the indus-try’s growth, Hause said.

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