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"All an e-book is—it's a PDF with rights assigned," said James Alexander, director of e-books at Adobe. Alexander, along with fellow e-publishing experts—Texterity CEO Martin Hensel and Director of Acquisitions for Burnham, Munger & Root, Richard Nash— addressed the fate of e-book publishing at BookTech this week in New York City."e-Book is the poster child for networking publishing," continued Alexander. "By mid-September, there were books about September 11 that were only available by e-books. Nothing can work so quickly." He explained that by using the immediacy of the publishing tool, users and manufacturers of e-content have the opportunity to harness the benefits of print-on-demand online. Particularly, educational publishers, such as Oxford University Press, are already utilizing e-book technology to repurpose content into multiple formats via Adobe PDF e-books. "If you're doing e-textbooks," he said. "Having a desktop solution is very important. Otherwise it's very expensive to produce a textbook and spit it out in various formats."Anderson also explained that the definition of cross-media publishing, whether content is bound for the Web, print, video or wireless device, is virtually the same. "It's the output that's different," he said. Three categories he considers to be especially important in the e-publishing realm is creation, management and delivery. He said, "Tools, tagging the assets and getting content to users is e-publishing."Nash further analyzed the theoretical basis behind e-publishing, specifically the wealth of information available online for educational publishing purposes. He said, "The ideal situation is to succeed at e-content in ways that are mutually compatible." Nash insisted, "Reference publishers are making money doing e-content right now" in an industry that has also been second-guessing the success rate of e-books in general. "Instead of trying to read tea leaves," added Nash, "it's best to look at e-publishing from the supply side." In other words, conversion control, PDF archiving and secure content distribution are important issues already being addressed by technology providers, such as Texterity's Hensel, who have invested in e-books as a valid means of not replacing print, but supplementing it.Hensel explained that e-book success comes from an acclimation period, pointing out that St. Martin's Press set up a Web site wherein users can download sample chapters from e-books either to supplement review galley books or to preview a potential print book to buy. "So much of publishing is to build buzz," said Hensel. "e-Books are a great way because you have no variable cost."He explained that publishers invest heavily in printing and binding preview copies of books to be sent to reviewers that might otherwise be saved by using e-books. "In the bound galley world, you're lucky to get them opened up—most are never touched by a reviewer. It's a very wasteful process," he said. "But St. Martins experienced much higher increase in reads (by supplementing print copies with e-books)."Hensel pointed out that wireless e-books will also become a reality in 2002 with the Nokia 9290, a PDA with built-in telephone capabilities. Already the device is selling successfully in Europe, said Hensel. He also estimated that the availability of such a device proves that e-publishing and telecommunications are married. "It's a very natural thing to be integrating PDAs with phones," he added. He also said that the increased availability of such devices, as well as more mainstream Adobe e-book Reader, Microsoft Reader, Palm Digital and Gemstar versions, prove that e-books are gaining momentum.Anderson agreed that as technology evolves, "content that's popular will sell in any format—print or electronic." He said that the ability to print is what makes a title so popular for e-download. "It's also important to archive PDFs as you go forward," explained Nash. "It's so cheap, it's free." He noted that as well as production benefits, e-books are selling across the board. "It's not just a few areas where e-books are selling. The number one e-books last year was Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Independent publishers are also selling e-children's, poetry and literary content, as well as professional titles."In short, Nash got to the much more controversial point. He summed, "I do believe consumers will by e-books."-Natalie Hope McDonald

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