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A Newsletter for Writers & Readers
Electronic Publishing

E-Book Publishers
E-Book Booksellers
E-Publishing Chart
Additional E-Publishing Links
Where to Find Free E-Books
Commercial E-Libraries

Electronic Publishers
Major E-Publishers
iUniverse
One visit to the iUniverse web site and you'll concur with Writer's Digest's choice of iUniverse.com as one of the 101 Best Web Sites for Writers.

iUniverse bills itself as "a new kind of publisher," and indeed it is! A "print on demand" publisher, iUniverse accepts manuscripts from authors online, but produces them as paperback, 6" x 9" bound copies, which are offered for sale on the iUniverse site and through "real" bookstores and distributors.

For a writer who has always dreamed of holding a copy of her book in her hand, iUniverse provides the expertise and presses to make it happen.

iUniverse has established partnerships with the Authors Guild, the Harlem Writers Guild, the Small Publishers of North America (SPAN), and the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), among others.

Mighty Words
For writers who would like to see their work published and distributed online, Might Words, an offshoot of Fatbrain.com, offers a low-cost publishing option. The process that Mighty Words uses makes it easy for writers to turn pamphlets, articles, novellas, and dissertations---as well as full-length books---into eMatter. Mighty Books notes: " It comes straight to your computer and is easily printed on your local printer."

Link here to read Mighty Words' FAQs, or here to check out their About Us information.

Spun out of Fatbrain.com in March 2000, Mighty Words uses relies upon "a proprietary secure digital rights management technology."

XLibris
Founded in April 1997, XLibris emphatically states that it is not a publisher. Instead, they note that "we are a publishing services provider. Traditional publishing houses select books based on the sales potentional of a manuscript. If they choose your book, large houses will also take the rights to your book. Xlibris takes no rights. Xlibris is an on-demand publishing services provider that enables authors to become their own publishers. When you publish with Xlibris, you are essentially self-publishing in the most efficient way possible."

To read the XLibris FAQs, link here.


Additional E-Publishers
CyberRead
Interesting in distributing your e-book? Read "What CyberRead Will Do for Authors." CyberRead offers a non-exclusive distribution agreement, so you can offer your book for sale at other e-bookstores, too.

Please note that CyberRead is an electronic bookstore, not a publisher. In fact, the site very emphatically states: "Please keep in mind that CyberRead is a bookstore, not a publisher. We accept finished works from authors. Those authors are considered to be self published. We will accept all finished works that are not excluded in paragraph 8 of our Electronic Distribution Agreement."

Electric Umbrella
Electric Umbrella, which entered the e-publishing field in 1997, currently has an inventory of over 1200 books, including many classics and 60 original titles. Please note that some of the copyright-free books published by Electric Umbrella and offered for sale via the roxybook.com site are also available for free via sites like Project Gutenberg and Books Online.

The Electric Umbrella site has an "under construction" look to it. On one page, EU states that the company has been in the e-publishing field since 1997 and publish 1200 books, but on another page, they note that they've been in business since 1999 and publish 700 books.

Also, while EU provides Submission Guidelines, they do not provide information on royalty payments, hosting fees, etc.

In the Works
iPublish
On May 23, 2000, Time Warner Trade Publishing announced that it will launch an electronic publishing venture, iPublish, in the first quarter of 2001. Link here to read the press release.

Electronic BookSellers
CyberRead
CyberRead's main bookstore is not yet open (as of June 13, 2000). The site, however, is currently offering a long list of FREE e-books, downloadable as either Zip files (the larger books are in Zip format) or in .txt format directly from a web page. You'll find a nice selection of Shakespeare's plays, Mark Twain's novels, and assorted other classics here---all in .txt (text) format.

Glassbook
Glassbook quite accurately describes their free Glassbook Reader software as a "software program for reading high-fidelity electronic books on your laptop or desktop PC." Link here to read more about the Glassbook and to download a free copy of the Glassbook Reader.

Glassbook Bookstore
In addition to offering readers a free copy of the Glassbook Reader software, Glassbook also provides a large collection of FREE books, as well as a growing list of e-books for sale, at their Glassbook Bookstore.

The Glassbook Bookstore is currently (as of June 13) offering 35 e-books free of charge! Titles range from Willa Cather's masterpiece, My Antonia, to Stephen King's latest, Riding the Bullet (for sale on other sites for $2.50).

The Glassbook Bookstore is also selling 22 of Mary Higgins Clark's books, including her latest, Before I Say Goodbye.

roxyBooks.com
roxyBooks.com currently offers a selection of fiction and non-fiction electronic books for sale in Adobe's PDF format. roxyBooks serves as the electronic bookstore for Electric Umbrella's books. As one of Glassbook's electronic publishing partners, they plan to offer ebooks in the Glassbook format.

Additional E-Publishing Links
Convert Your Masterpiece into an Adobe PDF File Online---For Free!
If you're willing to register on the site, Adobe will convert up to three of your documents into an Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) file for you. Just link here, to take advantage of this offer.

eBook Formats
Link here, to read a concise description of the eight major formats currently under use by e-book publishing. This description is provided by CyberRead on their site.

Tips for Authors on E-Publishing
Link here to download a copy of the Tips Guide (in PDF) that Glassbook provides for authors.

Pointers on Electronic Publishing
In their article "Why Electronic Publishing," authors Debora Hill & Sandra Brandenburg provide a brief history and background on a number of the ebook publishers.

Sources of Free Electronic Books & Databases
ALEX Catalog of Electronic Texts
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/alex/

Bartleby.com
http://www.bartleby.com
Started in 1993 as a research project by Steven H. van Leeuwen, in 1994 Bartleby.com published Whitman' s Leaves of Grass in digital form, giving it the distinction of being "the very first classic book published with use of web technology." This newly-designed site offers searchable classics, such as the 1919 edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Roget's II Theasaurus, and the Columbia Encyclopedia.

Electronic Text Center
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/uvaonline.html
The Electronic Text Center reports that it comprises "approximately 51,000 on and off-line humanities texts in 12 languages and more than 350,000 related images (book illustrations, covers, manuscripts, newspaper pages)."

OnLine Books
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
Begun in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom at Carnegie Mellon University, the On-Line Books Page, which provides a searchable database of over 11,000 copyright-free electronic books, is now housed at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ockerbloom continues to serve as the editor of this amazing--and commercial-free--resource.

Project Gutenberg
http://promo.net/pg
Begun in 1971 by Michael Hart, Project Gutenberg and its volunteers have digitally published over 2550 books, which are all copyright free and in the public domain.

Commercial Electronic Libraries
Ebrary
http://www.ebrary.com
Founded in February 1999, ebrary.com plans to launch its digital library service during summer 2000.

Glassbook Library Server
http://www.glassbook.com/products/libraryserver.htm

netLibrary
http://www.netlibrary.com
Although the netLibrary primarily markets its services to corporate, academic, and public libraries, it does offer a selection of over 4,000 books in its Reading Room for the public to VIEW free of charge. netLibrary's books can only be viewed while connected online to their site; they cannot be saved to the hard disk and read later.

netLibrary's site also features a small retail sales area, where registered users can select from a short list of current ebook fiction and non-fiction.

Questia Media:
http://www.questia.com
Founded by newly-minted Harvard law school graduate Troy Williams in 1998, Questia Media's mission is "to transform the nature of academic research and democratize access to knowledge." The company plans to launch their digital depository in early 2001. Questia Media reports on their web site that they expect "to have 50,000 volumes digitized in early 2001 and....over 250,000 within three years."

Last Updated: 16 June 2000

Ampersand ©Nancy Picchi, 1996-2000

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