The market for electronic books has been sluggish thus far, but Monday's announcement of an e-book standard might encourage more authors and readers to make the shift.
The Microsoft-led Open e-Book 1.0 draft specification is based on HTML and XML, and defines a standard method for formatting and delivering content to electronic reader devices.
The e-Book standards group was announced last fall, and includes more than a dozen companies involved in the publication and distribution of electronic texts.
Members of the Open e-Book group will comment on the specification over the next several weeks, and a final draft vote is scheduled for July. With the weight of Microsoft behind it, it's unlikely that any competing standards will emerge, preventing manufacturers from incompatibilities like the debacle opposing 56-KB modem technologies created.
Several electronic book readers are already on the market, including SoftBook and the Rocket e-Book, which have high-resolution screens, page-by-page display of text that's similiar to a book's, and the ability to store the equivalent of a briefcase full of books and magazines in a device no heavier than a single hardback.
At this month's BookExpo America, however, attendees were lukewarm on the idea of e-books, criticizing the difficulty of reading onscreen, the cost of devices -- like NuvoMedia's US$499 Rocket e-Book -- and the aesthetics of the experience.
The Open e-Book authoring group includes representatives from the US Commerce Department's National Institutes of Standards and Technology, BCL Computers, Brown University, DAISY Consortium, Exemplary Technologies, Glassbook, Librius.com, NuvoMedia, OverDrive Systems, The Productivity Works, RR Donnelley & Sons, Simon & Schuster, and SoftBook Press.
