Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/dpam18.zip/DPA17CGA.DET

Text File | 1993-08-04 | 22KB | 398 lines

 18, 78, 8, 2, 112, 0, 25
                      Digital Publishing Association News
                        Volume 2, Number 7 - July, 1993
                        Copyright (C) 1993 Ron Albright

The "Digital Publishing Association News" is sponsored by the Digital Publish-
ing Association and its member publications. DPA NEWS features news, product
developments, and other information of interest to authors, distributors,
and readers of electronic publications. Items presented here serve to inform
the public of the electronic publishing industry, that industry being the
authorship and publication of reading materials in electronic format, rather
than traditional, paper publishing.  Back issues may be found on the Digital
Publishing BBS at 205-854-1660.


What a month!

Of all the times to have to have a coronary bypass, I sure picked the absolute
worst month available. Unfortunately, I had little choice in the matter. In
any case, things are gradually getting back to normal and I have started to
catch up on the press inquiries, requests for information and membership
applications.  So, if you have access to this electronic newsletter and have
sent in mail within the past 4-6 weeks to the DPA, please be aware that (1) I
have it, (2) I have every intention to process it as soon as possible and,
(3), the response times will improve rapidly from here on. Please be patient.

BBS Woes

For those of you who have called the DPA BBS (205-854-1660) and have either
been rudely hung up on or otherwise electronically abused, I also apologize.
Allow me to explain. The DPA BBS is at my place of employment. Since I was
always in my office every morning at 5:30 AM, I was able to update and, if
necessary, troubleshoot the computer there early in the workday. Now, however,
I am unable to get to the machine, except rarely. With all the southern thun-
derstorms and power outages, the BBS has been scrambled almost every other day
the past couple of weeks. As a result, calls to the BBS have often met with
less-than-perfect results. Again, things are improving as I am now able to get
to the office machine more regularly (still not daily, but more often that
before). As a result, these snags should resolve soon. I am sorry for the
innumerable wasted calls. They couldn't be helped.

Alright, enough apologies. On with the news!

As mentioned last month, the Second Annual "Digital Quill" Awards for
excellence in electronic publishing are now underway. We are accepting entries
for all categories. They include:

Regular Publication - a weekly, monthly or bi-monthly publication that has
been in publication for 6 months or more. This category will include both
fiction and non-fiction magazines and newsletters.

Fiction Book - an original (eliminating reprints of the "classics" in digital
format - who among us can hope to compete with a digital edition of Shake-
speare's classics?) electronically published novel. Length: 50,000 words,
minimum.

Non-Fiction Book - an original non-fiction book in digital format. Length:
35,000 words minimum.

Short Story - a single original story appearing either alone or as part of an
anthology or magazine and published in digital format. This category shall
exclude reprints of stories originally published in a paper publication.
Length: 1000 words, minimum.

Non-fiction article - a single originally article appearing either alone or as
part of a magazine and published in digital format. This category shall
exclude reprints of articles originally published in paper. Length: 1500
words, minimum.

Miscellaneous Publishing - to accommodate experimental literature, this cate-
gory is new to the 1993 Quill Awards. This category shall include (but not be
limited to) poetry and electronic comic strips, for example. Anything that you
have created that can't be pigeon-holed into the above categories can be
submitted under this heading.

Publishing software - a software program (Shareware or traditionally marketed)
designed for publishing text and/or graphics and facilitating their
distribution and viewing.  Nominations will be accepted from users as well as
original authors.

Please remember the following important points:

1. You do NOT have to be a member of the Digital Publishing Association to
submit for the Quill Awards. No preferential treatment will be given DPA
member authors or publishers. The Quill Awards are an open competition and all
are invited to submit.

2. Be aware that the competition is open to materials that were FIRST
published in electronic format. That means, materials that have been uploaded
to an online system or distributed on disk for reading as digital materials
previously are eligible for consideration. Materials that were simply created
on computer (most writers use those for EVERYTHING these days, anyway) and do
not meet the criteria of having been made available on an online system for
reading are ineligible. This is an important requirement. Please remember it.

3. Finally, the Quill Awards are not computer-specific. The DPA is equipped to
judge material submitted in most computer formats, Including, but not limited
to DOS, Windows, and Macintosh). We invite material from all hardware plat-
forms.

Since we now have some funding from membership dues, prizes this year should
be worthy of the quality of the material submitted. The DPA Board of Directors
will determine whether cash awards or something equivalent (engraved plaques,
trophies, etc.) will be presented. Final determination of that will be made
within the next 6-8 weeks.

Submissions will be accepted from original authors or from the editors of a
publication in which the submitted material appeared.  Submissions must be
made in digital format (via modem or on disk) to any of the "electronic ad-
dresses" listed below. Deadline for submissions is September 30, 1993. Win-
ners will be announced in association with the activities of "Digital Pub-
lishing Month," annually recognized each November. A major press campaign will
be launched that month and the award winners are assured extensive press
exposure.

Judges will be announced in the near future from the membership ranks of the
Digital Publishing Association and its officers.  As always, decision of the
judges is final.

Entries (or requests for more information) for the 1993 Quill Awards can be
submitted to any of the following addresses:
                      ┌────────────────────────────────┐
                      │ CompuServe: 75166,2473         │
                      │ GEnie: RALBRIGHT               │
                      │ MCI Mail: 370-7474 (RALBRIGHT) │
                      └────────────────────────────────┘
Or, if you have a modem and are not a subscriber to these online systems, you
can upload submissions to the Digital Publishing Association BBS at 205-854-
1660 (1200/2400/9600; 24 hours/day).

Or, if you wish, you can submit materials on disk by mailing to:
                 ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
                 │ Digital Publishing Association, Inc.,   │
                 │ 1160 Huffman Road, Birmingham, AL 35215 │
                 └─────────────────────────────────────────┘

The World Continues to Awaken...

It seems to me that every passing month brings more and more evidence that
both the computer and publishing industries are rapidly coming to understand
the potential financial rewards of electronic publishing. The rate that news
articles and the like are popping up is growing exponentially as the major
players in both industries start to smell the market.

The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 1, 1993) carried a front page story
titled "Electronic Campus: Technology Threatens to Shatter the World of Col-
lege Textbooks." The subtitle was "CD-ROM, Interactivity, PCs Spread While
Publishers Mostly Wait and See." Mainly dealing with the growing use of com-
puter-accessible teaching materials at the college level, the article was full
or quotes that tell the story of the growing movement away from print and onto
disk. Witness the following:

"The textbook is the wrong medium for colleges today; I call it pedagogical
polyester. These days, the world changes every six months and textbooks come
out every three or four years. The technology is now in place to keep up with
change, but textbooks can't do that." - James Noblitt, Institute for Academic
Technology, University of North Carolina.

"If textbook publishers don't wake up and learn how to make, market and dis-
tribute something other than a book, the rug will be pulled right out from
under us." - Robert Lynch, McGraw-Hill Inc.

Within a decade, "there will be no paper textbooks at the college level." Bob
Stein, Voyager Company. [Admittedly, not an unbiased observer].

"There are going to be a lot of new players in this [the electronic publish-
ing] field, and size won't matter - innovation will." - John M.  Connolly,
former head of college publishing, Addison-Wesley.

The most interesting quote is the following. It crystallizes what many predict
will be the battleground of the future in the digital publishing marketplace.
The computer/software industry versus the traditional paper publishers. The
quote is from Apple Computers' Daryl Weiner:

"We had a meeting for 500 publishers in September and said we wanted to
develop partnerships. I think they are afraid we want to take over their
industry, which we don't. They have gone from being threatened by the tech-
nology to finally starting to embrace it; but only because they are in the
survival mode."

More in the issue of the DPA News will give witness to the fact that the
computer and publishing industries are just beginning to start stepping on
each others' toes.

Weird Place for Electronic Books #1....

Of all places to see electronic books discussed, I saw that the president of
Franklin Publishing appeared on Roy Firestone's "Up Close" sports talk show on
ESPN in June. Amazing. The Franklin electronic book reader and the baseball
statistics book was demoed and well-received. Seems electronic books are
making it big everywhere.

Weird Place for Electronic Books #2....

I picked up one of my medical "throw away" magazines (I get about 50 a month -
all just out of the blue) last week and, lo and behold, there was an article
titled "Reinventing the Book" (by Sally Lodge Randall; "Diversion," June,
1993; p. 119). The article touched upon the new realm of digital publishing
and what impact it might have on the future of reading and interacting with
the "written" word.

PDA Market Projected to be Big!...

According to Jacqueline Emigh, writing for NewsBytes (the world's most widely
read electronic computer industry newsletter) reports that the market for
"personal digital assistants" (PDAs) is expected to soar from 40,000 US unit
shipments in 1993 to 3.5 million by 1995, pushing greater adoption of pen
computing in the process. These projections are based on the reliable BIS'
Personal Computing Market Advisory Service.

The BIS report states that, ultimately, these devices will serve as portable
"dataphones" and telephones, as well as personal organizers, "dynamic paper,"
forms automators, and PC satellites, as reported by Ms. Emigh.

In making the report, the BIS representative reported that PDAs will redefine
the desktop PC as well as pen markets in that the desktop PC will come to act
as a "server" for pen computers and PDAs. Meanwhile, pen computers and PDAs
will behave as electronic input devices for desktop PCs -- "electronic
sketchpads" in the case of the pen computers.

According to the NewsBytes report, BIS is predicting for 1995 US shipments of
378,000 for pen computers and 333,000 for PDAs. By 1997, the balance is
expected to shift, with 665,000 shipments of pen computers and 1.4 million of
PDAs.

Adobe Drops the Bombshell of the Electronic Publishing Year...

According to the hype from Adobe Systems and written about everywhere from the
Washington Post to PC Week, the problem of incompatibility between computer
platforms has been eliminated. At least for the exchange of documents.
According to Adobe, their new Acrobat software will enable computers that have
never been on speaking terms will soon be able to electronically share
documents, pictures, graphics and a wealth of other data. Users can now
transmit documents among different machines, operating systems, display
screens and originating programs.

What does it all mean? For instance, an annual report produced by an artist on
an Apple Macintosh can be zipped through Acrobat and reproduced on an editor's
IBM PC. The editor can affix some electronic "sticky notes" with suggestions
for changes and send the report back to the artist. Or employees working on
different computers may be able to pull out new versions of the company phone
book or employee guide from a database. They may also be able to share an
electronic version of a newspaper or magazine.

Adobe hopes Acrobat, a derivative of Adobe PostScript printer language, has
such a major impact on offices that it adds a new verb, "PDFing," to the
business vocabulary, just the way "FedEx" has come to mean overnight shipping.
PDF is short for Portable Document Format, the function that makes the
compatibility possible.

Like PostScript, PDF is device-independent. It's also operating system-inde-
pendent, computerspeak that means you can use Acrobat to create a PDF file -
anything from a memo to your company's annual report - on a PC and send the
file to someone who uses a Macintosh. The Mac user can then open the file and
look at a document virtually identical to the one the PC user created. Al-
though the PDF file doesn't contain the typefaces, it does contain information
about them - kind, size, style, etc. The Mac user doesn't have to have the
same typefaces because the Acrobat software will create extremely accurate
representations.

"Acrobat will fundamentally charge the economics of information by removing
the critical barriers that have kept electronic documents from moving between
computers," said John Warnock, chairman and chief executive officer. "Today's
paper-based information is hampered by the physical media," Warnock said.
"Acrobat technology liberates information and the flow of ideas and allows it
to enter the electronic age."

What does all this mean to the digital publishing marketplace? It means a
great deal. Besides internal corporate uses, Acrobat may just turn out to the
universal interface for electronic publishers to get their documents across
the incompatibility jungle. Acrobat will clearly be useful to publishers
seeking easier ways of distributing information. A newsletters, electronic
magazines, and even books could be distributed through telephone lines into
computers, with the pages appearing the same as they do in print.  Adobe
spokesmen say the Acrobat products preserve the essential look and feel of
even the most complex documents that contain photographs, various typefaces
and color.

Look for competing products soon from such other corporate "biggies" as, you
might have guessed, Microsoft Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Xerox Corp.

The first versions of Acrobat will work on Apple's Macintosh system and
personal computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system. Unix and DOS
systems will be available later this year.

Abode unveiled three products -- Acrobat Reader, Acrobat Exchange and Acrobat
Distiller -- using its portable document format.    Acrobat Reader, to be used
for viewing documents, will be sold at $35 a copy at quantities of more the
500. Acrobat Exchange, to be used for networks, will be sold at $195 for a
single copy and $146 a copy at quantities of more than 100 copies.

Finally, Acrobat Distiller, to be used for creating documents, was priced at
$695 for individual users and $2,495 for networks. In addition to allowing you
to create and look at PDF files, Acrobat Exchange lets you search and annotate
them. You can create links between elements in a document, linking a person's
name with, say, a telephone number or a graphic. Links are displayed in red -
clicking on one sends you to the page where the next link occurs.

You can also create bookmarks or custom indexes, which can be displayed to the
right of a document. In addition, you can display thumbnails of document pages
and go to any page by clicking on its thumbnail.

For more information, contact Adobe Systems Inc., 1585 Charleston Rd., P.O.
Box 7900, Mountain View, Calif. 94039-7900.  1-800-833-6687 or 415-961-4400.

Commentary: While expensive, compared to the current crop of electronic
publishing software and certainly not to be confused with full-fledged
hypertext or multimedia packages (though components of both exist in Acrobat),
the new software should jumpstart solving the problem of producing documents
for incompatible computers. Perhaps most importantly of all, the problem is
now being worked on by "the big boys." And with Microsoft, Adobe, and the
others, better and more inexpensive solutions are sure to follow. The future
is bright for digital publishers to soon be able to produce ONE document and
have it read on virtually any modern computer. The final hurdle to widespread
acceptance of digital publishing appears almost cleared.

Ziff-Davis Tests Electronic Publishing...

Ziff-Davis, the mammoth computer magazine publisher, began publishing it's own
line of books about 2 years ago. Now, they are moving into the next stage of
publishing: they are publishing electronically. The first book released by
Ziff is "PC Magazine DOS 6 Techniques and Utilities" by Jeff Proise. The
digital version of the 1000+ page book will be available on CompuServe's
ZiffNet on June 28.

Selling for $39.95 in its paper incarnation, DOS 6 Utilities can be
downloaded, along with Ziff's proprietary search and viewing software (ZVIEW),
for $12.95 plus connect-time charges.

Commentary: Ziff-Davis is one of the first major publishers to try this
distribution method. We wish them every success. Having the "big boys"
experimenting in the marketplace can only lend more credibility to the idea of
electronic publishing for all.

FPI Inc. Announces New Worlds Magazine and Imprint...

Floppyback Publishing International, a founding member of the Digital
Publishing Association, announced the release of New Worlds Volume I.I, the
first electronic magazine to be released with the New Worlds imprint.

In making the announcement, FPI President Paul F. Peacock said "New Worlds is
a break-through in electronic publishing, for the first time the industry has
attracted established writers and poets to the medium. We have a crime novel
by Joseph Triagaboff, already available in hardcover and paperback, poetry by
Norman Rosten, who won the Guggenheim twice, writing by Robert Fox who won the
Nelson Algren Short Story Award, a novel by Matthew Paris, published in 1973
and praised by Philip Jose Farmer, the memoirs of Ben Weber, America's first
12-tone composer and much more.

Peacock continued by saying "In fact, New Worlds also contains original
articles and reviews, if it was printed out it would be over 300 pages and
it's free.  Matthew Paris, our Editor-in-Chief, has taken us a significant
step closer to our goal of providing a direct national distribution system for
authors."

FPI Inc. is a two year old electronic publishing firm which counts among its
industry firsts six books in conjunction with Rutgers University Press,
printing of book jackets directly on the disk and pre-hardcover publication.

A listing of FPI's books includes these New Worlds Floppyback Titles:

             The StarTrek People                               10.00
             How I took 62 Years To Commit Suicide             10.00
             Portraits of American Musicians                   10.00
             Portraits of American Writers                     10.00
             The Bone Orchard                                  10.00
             Decadent Planet                                   10.00
             The Holy City                                     10.00
             New York: 2084                                    10.00
             Mystery                                           10.00
             Songs for Patricia                                10.00
             White Towers                                      10.00
             Moons of Venus                                    10.00
             Modem                                             10.00
             Einstein's Folly                                  10.00
             Love, War and the Movies                          10.00

FPI floppybacks are available only on 3.5" 1.44Mb disk. For more information,
contact FPI Inc., P.O. Box 2084, Hoboken, N.J. 07030.


                               Winding down...

That's it for this month. The next few months - with the Digital Quill Awards
cranking up and the activities in preparation for November's "Electronic
Publishing Month" festivities - will be an exciting time. Stay tuned, join in,
and spread the word! See you next month.


                            * * * * * * * * * * * *
                            *  Thanks to ALL for  *
                            *   Your Support and  *
                            *   and Assistance!   *
                            * * * * * * * * * * * *


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