The e-book revolution still to come: your superstore may not sell them anymore, but retail e-book sales broke the one million units mark for the first time in 2003

Black Issues Book Review, March-April, 2004 by Robert S. Anthony

Were you asleep as the world converted from paper books to electronic books? No, paper books still rule park benches and the seats of commuter trains and buses. Electronic books, or e-books, have yet to take over since their introduction a few years ago. Hardware made solely for e-book reading have proven to be a hard sell to consumers.

Nevertheless, e-books have developed a following. Thanks to their emergence, you can purchase and download a new title the moment it's released. Instead of turning real pages, you tap the screen of a handheld de vice, or click a mouse or tap the keyboard of your computer.

According to the Open e-Book Forum (www.openebook.org), a nonprofit e-book trade organization, 2003 marked the first time retail e-book sales broke the one million units mark--and that was with three months left in the year. Sales for the third quarter of 2003 were 63 percent ahead of sales for the same period in 2002 while revenue increased by 37 percent, according to the group.

Some booksellers, however, have already given up. Barnes&Noble.com stopped selling e-books in September 2003. Borders Group, Inc. and Amazon.com, Inc., on the other hand, continue to sell e-books at www.amazon.com.

So what do you need to read an e-book? The answer is a computer and some e-book-reading software. A major roadblock here, however, is that there is no one standard for the software. Many popular e-books are published in multiple formats. Popular e-book readers include Microsoft Corp.'s Microsoft Reader (www.microsoft.com/reader), Adobe Systems, Inc.'s Adobe Reader (www.adobe.com), palmOne, Inc.'s Palm Reader (www.palmdigitalmedia.com) and Paris-based MobiPocket.com S.A.'s Mobipocket Reader (www.mobipocket.com). All can be downloaded free from the respective Web sites. A chart on eBooks Corp. Ltd.'s ebook.com Internet bookstore compares the different formats. (See www.ebooks.com /help/tools/readerstable.smm).

MobiPocket.com offers a free Mobipocket Reader as well as the $19.95 Mobipocket Reader Pro, which has additional features. Mobipocket Reader and Mobipocket Reader Pro are available in versions for Palm OS devices, Pocket PCs and many other handheld devices. The free PC version of Mobipocket Reader allows users to transfer e-books to a handheld device.

As for the e-books themselves, prices vary greatly--generally from less than $10 to around $20. Mobile Digital Media (www.gomdm.com) recently released Merriam-Webster; Collegiate Dictionary ($39.95), which comes on a postage stamp size memory card.

Libraries have compiled large e-books collections. The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library (www.etext.lib.virginia.edu) offers hundreds of e-books online.

With thousands of titles available in e-book format, there is still plenty of room for industry growth, but don't expect to see empty shrives in your library or bookstore anytime soon.

Robert S. Anthony is a syndicated technology writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York.