eBooks Are Ready for Prime Time

  The Fight for eBook Standards

vs.

using information from The Industry Standard, July 31, 2000

A battle may be looming (a la Betamax vs. VHS) in setting the standard for electronic distribution among OeB (Open eBook), favored by Gemstar and Microsoft, and PDF (Adobe’s proprietary design for electronic document delivery).

The big-name authors Stephen King and James Ellroy made the news this summer with the sale of digital rights to their works.  In September, Thomson Electronics announced the latest electronic gadget for reading the material. 

But, behind the scenes the battle for how the electronic books will be formatted, distributed and displayed is still being played out. 

The two contending formatting standards have three standard bearers.  In one corner is Adobe with its proprietary PDF technology.  (Adobe is also offering a security standard for the digital rights management of eBbooks, EBX—Electronic Book Exchange.)  On the opposite side are Microsoft and Gemstar (which owns the eBook reader companies Softbook and NuvoMedia, the producer of Rocket eBook).  They are the champions of OeB, the non-proprietary offering, and among the 61 principal members of the OeB Forum, which includes McGraw-Hill, Random House, Palm, Nokia, and IBM.  (A comparison of existing PDF and OeB features is offered in the table below.)

“The name of the game is to be able to take content and repurpose it into anything,” says David Ornstein, the OeB Forum president. The OeB-format allows text and images to reflow and fit any screen, ranging from a desktop system with a 20-in. monitor to a five-line display for a smartphone.   

Now, PDF eBooks are designed much like paper books—words and pictures on the page are fixed in place.  However, a new version of the PDF specification is in the works.  It is said to allow text and images to reflow to accommodate different devices, and working prototypes of PDF readers for the Palm OS and Windows CE devices have been developed.  Also, a Linux-based color device that will display PDF was announced by Everybook, earlier this year.

The Glassbook Reader

This eBook reader company, Glassbook,

was bought by Adobe in August.

 (Source: Adobe and OeB)

Click here to read “Digital Publishing: An Open E-Book" – The Industry Standard, July 31, 2000

For related information on eBooks, see:

“Print Books Are an Endangered Species”

How authors are handling the digital divide

Education is leading the way with eBooks

Just like MTV, teen market wants its eBooks

…And, so do retirees

But will people buy them?

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