Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/dpam18.zip/DPA18CGA.DET

Text File | 1993-08-04 | 18KB | 308 lines

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                      Digital Publishing Association News
                       Volume 2, Number 8 - August, 1993
                        Copyright (C) 1993 Ron Albright

DPA News is sponsored by the Digital Publishing Association. It features news,
product developments, and other information of interest to authors, distribu-
tors, and readers of electronic publications.  Items presented here serve to
inform the public of the electronic publishing industry which covers author-
ship and publication of reading materials in electronic format rather than
traditional paper publishing. Find back issues on the DPA BBS at 205-854-1660.

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We want to mention again, in case this is your first edition of the DPA News,
that the Second Annual "Digital Quill" Awards for excellence in electronic
publishing are well underway. News of the awards competition has already made
it to the NewsBytes news wire, thanks to Washington editor and DPA member John
McCormick.  Since NewsBytes is, undoubtedly, the most widely-read computer-
specific news service in existence with millions of readers weekly, his
reporting of the competition has brought a great response.  Particularly, from
circles that the DPA and our newsletter does not normally reach. Thanks to
John for covering the event for us. The press campaign is continuing.

To recap, we are accepting entries for several categories of electronic
publications. 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 compete with a digital edition of Shakespeare'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
category 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 distrib-
ution and viewing.  Nominations will be accepted from users as well as origi-
nal authors.

Del Freeman, a founding member of the DPA and editor of the highly successful
"Ruby's Pearls" electronic magazine, suggested an additional category for
awards. We have added the following to the awards competition:

New Serial Publication - a weekly, monthly or otherwise regularly-scheduled
publication that has been issued for less than 6 months but has been published
at least for two issues. This category will include both fiction and non-
fiction magazines and newsletters and is proposed to recognize and encourage
new issues.

We have also added a "Miscellaneous" category. Since electronic publishing
encourages experimentation with publishing materials, there are a number of
publications out there that just can't be pigeon-holed into any of the above.
With this new category, we can recognize poetry, graphic collections, comics,
and other publications outside the previous "standard" categories.

This brings the number of categories to eight.  We need offers from within the
DPA membership and beyond to serve as judges (non-DPA members with the
appropriate qualifications will be considered).  Judges will serve outside
their own individual categories. For example, if you publish a regular fiction
magazine or anthology, you could serve as a judge in the "novels" category or
"non-fiction book" category. If you are a programmer of a publishing software
package, you could serve as a judge of any category of literature. We encour-
age ALL DPA members to volunteer to serve as a judge in some category. With
the expected number of entries it is imperative that we get a large panel of
judges from which to choose. Please notify the DPA office - either through
electronic mail or through "paper mail" of your willingness to serve as a
judge. Finding judges is the one critical aspect of the Quill Awards that
always requires the most work. PLEASE help make it easy this year by volun-
teering a few hours of your time to look over some of the entries. We need
your support and input desperately.

Also, if you are submitting to the competition, 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
platforms.

Entries for the 1993 Quill Awards (or requests for DPA information) may be
submitted to any of the following addresses:
                      ┌────────────────────────────────┐
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                      │ GEnie: RALBRIGHT               │
                      │ MCI Mail: 370-7474 (RALBRIGHT) │
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IMPORTANT NOTE: We are also looking for input from the DPA membership about
what we should do about prizes this year. Last year, we awarded a simple but
attractive certificate (along with a great deal of press coverage) to the
winners of the Quills. Since we have a modest budget this year, and I DO mean
modest, we hope we can come to some consensus within the membership on
offering something more substantial to this year's winners. If you are a DPA
member, please submit suggestions to the DPA's multiple electronic mail-
boxes.  The final decision will be made by the Board of Directors. As soon as
the prizes are determined, we will make an announcement.

A Conference All Should Attend . . .

We received a fax from Chris Fisher of the Atwood Group (11827 W.  112th St.,
Overland Park, KS 66210; 913-469-1110; FAX [phone]) on July 28 announcing
the inevitable: The First Annual "Electronic Books" conference. Sponsored by
DPA corporate member Meckler (11 Ferry Lane West, Westport, CT 06880;
203-226-6967), the conference is billed as "the first annual conference and
exhibition on the emergence of electronic books and their impact on
traditional information media, markets, and applications." We would say it is
long-overdue! Congratulations to Meckler for jumping out in front of the
corporate pack with this wonderful event.

Chris sent along a copy of the conference program and, as the understatement
of the year, the festivities appear to be as exciting as the idea itself.

A workshop will be offered on Monday, September 27 on "Exploring Electronic
Book Production with Voyager's Expanded Book Toolkit" - by Roger Devine of
Voyager.

The conference program begins on Tuesday, September 28. The inaugural keynote
address will be given by John B. Evans, head of Rupert Murdock's "News
Corporation." He is responsible for determining the group's strategy for
electronic publishing.

Topics for the ensuing seminars include the following:

"New Technologies, New Paradigms: The Publishing Challenge;" Bob Faber, Senior
Vice-President, The 3DO Company.

"Publishing for MPC;" Tom Corddry, Director, Multimedia Publishing Group,
Microsoft Corporation.

"Beyond the Expanded Book." Bob Stein, President, Voyager Company.

"Interactive Story Telling;" John Baker, Vice President of Product
Development, Broderbund Software.

"Creating the Electronic Dictionary;" Andrew Rosenheim, Electronic Publishing
Director, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England.

"The Irresistible Rise of the Memory Card;" Stephen Harper, Chairman, Personal
Computer Memory Card International Association.

"Developments in Memory Card Platforms;" Gilbert DeLiso, Director of Sales,
Wizard Division, Sharp Corporation.

"The Future of Memory Card Publishing;" Morton David, President, Franklin
Electronic Publishers.

"Strategies for Chip-based Publishing;" Mike Weiner, President, Selectronics.

"Personal Digital Assistants and the Future of Portable Electronic Media;"
Gaston Bastiaens, Manager, Personal Interactive Electronics Division, Apple
Computer.

"Evolution of Sony's Electronic Book Format;" Ken Butti, President, Electronic
Book Publishing, Tokyo, Japan.

Here is how the brochure we received explained the purpose of the conference:

"Electronic Books 1993 is the first conference and exhibition on the emergence
of electronic books and their impacts on traditional information media,
markets and applications. This new annual event takes place in New York City -
the publishing capitol of the world.

"Electronic media across a range of generic and proprietary platforms are
already transforming the structure of the information market place and
everyday practices and expectations of information users in all sectors.
Hardware, software and telecommunications companies, together with major
information providers and publishers, are rapidly finding their interests
converging. Hence, they are increasingly working together to build a rich
variety of strategic alliances, innovative new product categories and exciting
opportunities for investment in a new generation of information publishing
activities.

"Electronic Publishing 1993 tracks the rise of electronic books in two ways.
First, the seminar program examines the increasing use of book metaphors in
interactive media, assessing and illustrating how far these metaphors work and
where they brake down, demanding innovation and creative adaptation to ensure
the underlying information products deliver the right values effectively to
their users. Secondly, the conference examines the rise of palmtop and
portable electronic media, describing the emerging platforms and publishing
opportunities and assessing the strategic implications for traditional
information media, markets and applications.

"The conference brings together some of the world's leading players in
electronic book platforms and media and provides a unique opportunity to gain
a global strategic view of the hardware, software, publishing and marketing
development issues."

The conference will be at the Sheraton - New York from September 29-29 and is,
as mentioned, organized by Meckler. Meckler is the publisher of 12
professional periodicals including CD ROM World, Internet World, and Virtual
Reality Report. They already produce 13 trade shows annually and recently did
the Electronic Books International conference in London. Booths (10 by 10) are
available at $1850. You can reserve space by calling on John Gosselin at 207-
883-1223 or writing him (John Gosselin, Exhibit Hall Manager, Electronic Books
'93, P.O. Box 12, Scarborough, ME 04070-0012; FAX: [phone]).

While the DPA is certainly not in a position, financially, to attend - much
less exhibit! - we certainly hope that some of the membership in the area (we
know Ted Husted [UserWare] and Paul Peacock [FloppyBack] are located in the
area) will be able to attend the conference. We would love to be able to
publish a report of the event in a future DPA News. In any case, as we have
observed before, we feel that an industry fully arrives when they have their
own conference. For electronic books and digital publishing, that time has
clearly arrived.

Speaking of "arriving". . .

UPI, in the person of staff correspondent Joe Fasbinder, covered Ziff-Davis'
entry into the electronic publishing movement in a lengthy article released
for publication August 1. He opened the article by discussing one of the major
benefits of electronic book publishing and distributing. He writes:

  "You can now avoid the embarrassment of buying books and having them
languish on the bookshelf unread -- silent testaments to good intentions gone
awry, If you have a computer and modem, you can download books from a new
service. That way, if you never get around to reading them, at least they
won't stare you down. And you can erase them."

Fasbinder then goes on to describe Ziff's experiment in digital books as
described in the July issue of DPA News. As mentioned there, through the end
of the 1993 ZiffNet - Ziff-Davis' modem service accessible either directly or
through CompuServe - will be allowing users to download its own $39.95 "PC
Magazine DOS 6 Techniques and Utilities," by Jeff Prosise. [Nota Bene: ZiffNet
is also available on Prodigy but downloading the book is not supported on that
version of ZiffNet]. With your modem you can get all 1,035 pages of it, as
well as a collection of 48 software utilities for a very reasonable $12.95.

The digital version of "PC Magazine DOS 6 Techniques and Utilities" also comes
with a searchable viewer so that you can read it on your computer screen and
quick-search software that makes it easier to use than a printed reference
book. According to Ziff, the book takes up about one megabyte in compressed
form. Fasbinder states the obvious be observing "That's a lot faster than
skimming or using the index and flipping pages. So what you end up with is a
book that's less expensive and more effective -- at least as a reference."

You do have to pay for the downloading time as well. A Ziff spokesperson,
quoted by Fasbinder, estimated that at 2400 bps, downloading the book would
take about 76 minutes, or $16 worth of connect time. At 9600 bps, the download
procedure would take about 20 minutes, or $7 worth of connect time.

But as Fasbinder noted, "that even after adding the connect time charges to
the $12.95 price, you still get a significant discount off the $39.95 cover
price for the book and also have that nifty computerized search capability.
And you can print out what you need when you need it."

You can access ZiffNet directly by dialing [phone] and following the
instructions or get to ZiffNet through CompuServe's "gateway." Fasbinder goes
on to state that Ziff-Davis is evaluating other titles potentially for on-line
distribution, but "it will be up to the computing public to decide if the
distribution method is popular enough to merit continuation."

It should prove to be a revealing experiment that we should all keep our eyes
on. If Ziff can make it work, smaller publishers should be able to do the same
with online services. If book distribution be modem fails on ZiffNet, we
should all take notice.

Winding down . . .

This issue is shorter than usual due to the rush of activities surrounding the
Quill Awards. Pitch in and spread the word!  Post notices on your local BBS
and elsewhere.  Volunteer for the judging. It will take only a few hours, and
it's imperative for the success of the Quills.  With the awards cranking up
and preparations for November's "Electronic Publishing Month," we'll be real
busy at DPA HQ.  Stay tuned, join in, and spread the word! See you next month.

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