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E-gads!
Okay, it’s time to get serious about online science fiction. New
and reprint sites are popping up like mushrooms after a monsoon.
Hardware and software companies are offering new, or at least
improved, technologies to ease the strain of eyeballing print on screens.
And of course, with his phenomenally successful Riding the Bullet, Stephen King single-handedly seems to have legitimized the entire
e-publishing industry–and not just our own little corner of it.
Or has he? King’s second foray into ebooks, a serial called The Plant, is under a cloud as I type on this bright September afternoon.
Should he shut it down, as he is currently threatening to do,
he may well slow public acceptance of ebooks.
But nothing will stop it.
You see, more important than the King phenomenon is the Evil Empire’s
release of Microsoft Reader <http://www.microsoft.com/reader/>, yours free for the downloading. Its Clear Type technology is
supposed to "deliver the look and feel of high-resolution printing
to on-screen reading." Well, maybe. Even the large typeface looks
pretty small to these middle-aged eyes on a fifteen inch monitor.
Heaven forbid that I’ll ever have to plough though a book of Dune-ish proportions on a laptop, Clear Type or no. But Microsoft Reader
is a signal from Our Kindly Uncle Bill to print publishers and
cyber-entrepreneurs alike: this market is now open for serious
business.
If the truth be told, I’d rather access content with the Glassbook Reader <http://www.glassbook.com> which can also read Adobe Acrobat PDF files, mostly because
it is much more flexible than Microsoft Reader with regards to
sizing typeface. For those visionaries reading stories on a Palm <http://www.palm.com/> or Handspring’s Visor <http://www.handspring.com/>, or one of the Windows CE handhelds, there is the Peanut Reader <http://www.peanutpress.com>. Yet another hardware/software platform for ebooks is the relaunch
of the Rocket eBook and the Softbook Reader <http://www.ebook-gemstar.com/>. These, you may recall, are the much-ballyhooed devices that
were supposed to replace paper books. They did not exactly take
the marketplace by storm, in part because they cost too damn much.
The two companies that produced them were subsequently gobbled
up by Gemstar, which has the deep pockets to give them a second
chance. The revamped hardware will be built by RCA. I’ve played
some with the Rocket eBook and I have to say that it has serious
technogeek appeal, but I’m still worried that it doesn’t hit the
price point most cheapskates–me, for instance–are willing to pay.
But what is an ebook, anyway? According to eBookAd.com <http://www.ebookad.com/>, "The term ebook refers to an electronic book. A good ebook
consists of much more than the textual contents of a book. It
preserves the style, page layout, fonts and graphics of a publication."
It’s worth noting that the term ebook does not necessarily imply
that the work is of "book length." A short story can be an ebook.
Now, not all science fiction online is in an ebook format. Several
of the most important new SF sites present their wares in good
old HTML. The problem with HTML is that it is plug ugly. There
are no indents at the start of a paragraph and all paragraphs
have a space in between them. I suppose I might get used to these
quirks eventually–perhaps the day after the heat death of the
universe. There has been talk for some time of a revision to HTML
that will offer the look and feel of print. It can’t come soon
enough for me, since I find reading stories in a browser window
to be ever so slightly distracting, sort of like walking around
with a shoe untied.
Another important difference between ebooks and website-based
fiction is that, for the most part, the good ebooks are going
to cost you, while much of the best website-based fiction is free.
For the rest of this column, I’m going to focus on ebooks. Next
time out, I’ll point you at some of the new fiction websites.
Search Results
When I searched eBookAd.com, it turned up 592 science fiction
titles. Here are some of the major players in ebook publishing.
Baen Books Webscriptions <http://www.webscription.net/> is "A web based re-creation of the serialized novel using Science
Fiction published by Baen Books." For ten dollars a month, subscribers
will have access to a directory containing serialized segments
of books from the frontlist of Baen Books. Over the course of
three months, the entire book will appear on the site. What is
interesting about this deal is that subscribers will have the
opportunity to read these books prior to print publication. In fact, the site includes a disclaimer
stating that what will be posted before publication will be "un-proofed
copy similar to galley copies." Once the book is released in print,
all segments will be replaced with proofed copy. Of course, now
that I’ve told you that an ebook preserves the look of print,
I must contradict myself: Webscription ebooks will be posted in
HTML. Despite this drawback, Webscriptions is the boldest foray
any major SF publisher has made onto the net.
Byron Preiss’s imprint ibooks, inc. <http://www.ibooksinc.com/> launched in September ‘99. Ibooks are published simultaneously
on the net and in paper, where they are distributed by Simon and
Schuster. The ibooks list concentrates on the backlist of such
old masters as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Alfred Bester,
and Harry Harrison and franchise work, with a particular concentration
in novels derived from Isaac’s work. Prices range between eight
and twelve dollars. The ibooks site has an ambitious offshoot
at The SciFiVine <http://www.thescifivine.com> where you’ll find a community of science fiction fans busily
posting messages and chatting about the genre.
Back in May, Melisa and Richard Michaels started Embiid Publishing <http://www.embiid.net/>. "Part of our goal," writes Melisa,
"was to get electronic publishing started in a more author-and-reader-friendly
direction than paper publishing has gone." Between the two of
them, they have a winning combination of talent and experience.
Melisa, for example, is the author of ten novels and, until recently,
was the webmaster and driving force behind one of the best science
fiction sites on the web, that of the Science Fiction Writers of America <http://www.sfwa.org>. Thus far they have produced eighteen previously published books
by an eclectic list of writers like Avram Davidson, William Sanders,
Modean Moon, and Melisa herself. All their ebooks are encrypted
for a proprietary Embiid Reader, freeware which can be used to
read text files in any size up to 48 points. Also supported is
the Rocket eBook format. Prices range from three to five dollars.
ElectricStory.com <http://www.electricstory.com/> is another brand new reprint site. Its list isn’t that long yet,
but it is choice, including novels and short story collections by Lucius Shepard,
Terry Bisson, Tony Daniel, and Michael Bishop. Wonderful books
by Howard Waldrop, Rudy Rucker, and Paul Park are soon to follow.
The list price is $7.99 for each title but you may find them at
a discount. You can’t actually buy books at the site; instead
you have to click to Powells.com <http://www.powells.com> or Barnes&Noble.com <http://www.bn.com>. But the ElectricStory site is well worth a visit for the freebies
they offer. At this writing they include three stories from different
collections on the list and Lucius Shepard’s idiosyncratic and
often hilarious movie reviews.
A friendly word of warning before I commend Fictionwise <http://www.fictionwise.com> to your attention. I have a financial relationship with this
reprint short fiction site; you can buy some of my stories there.
So where do I get off mentioning it? Here are ten good reasons,
in alphabetical order: Gardner Dozois, Karen Haber, John Kessel,
Damon Knight, Nancy Kress, Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch,
Robert Silverberg, Michael Swanwick and Kate Wilhelm. Fictionwise
has managed to entice some of our most accomplished short fiction
practitioners to post stories. And most are represented not with
just a story or two, but with ten or more. Prices range from sixty
cents to two dollars for individual stories; "bundles" of stories,
collected either by theme or by individual writer, range from
ten to twenty dollars. The simple fact is, that nowhere else on
the web is there a larger collection of award-winning and award-nominated
science fiction than at Fictionwise. So I apologize to those who
think I’m using this space to flog my own product. Just skip my
stuff and go for the Malzberg.
I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with e-reads.com <http://www.e-reads.com/>. None of the links on their site are active. It could be that
I just arrived before they were ready to do business. But their
slogan "Bringing back the books you love by authors you remember,"
has a certain ring, don’t you think. And some of their product
is available now, even though their site isn’t, from capable authors
like Fritz Leiber, R. A. McAvoy, and Susan Schwartz.
Exit
At the start of the twenty-first century, editors and publishers
may well feel as though they are laboring under the famous Chinese
curse, "May you live in interesting times." It seems clear that
the once staid publishing industry is in the midst of a revolution.
As in any revolution, casualties are inevitable. It’s likely that
some of the new e-publishers may not survive. Similarly, it may
be that some of the dinosaurs of print will go extinct, if they
do not adapt to the changing digital environment.
Perhaps the most difficult problem e-publishers will face is finding
a way to make money selling fiction on the net. Information wants
to be free, or so they say. And if it isn’t free, any number of
netizens are willing to find ways to set it free. Hackers and
data pirates have some print publishers scared silly. Sure you
can Xerox a novel if you have a copier and a couple of hours,
but who is going to go to all that trouble? But in a matter of
minutes you can burn the complete works of Shakespeare onto a
CD-ROM or send it through your broadband connection to Osaka,
Oslo, and Oshkosh.
Writers too will face challenges. Will we see a kinder, gentler
online publishing industry, one that is less driven by a best
seller mentality? A publisher of ebooks has no need of a warehouse
or a distribution system that deals with moving atoms from here
to there. She can afford patience with a book, giving it time
to find its audience. But then, how will ebooks find their audiences?
Even if only a fraction of the greatest hits of the science fiction
backlist becomes available, it will flood a market that already
offers far, far too many choices. Is a new writer, promising but
not yet in full cry, going to be able to compete against the collected
works of Robert A. Heinlein?
What? You weren’t expecting me to come up with the answers to
these Big Questions, were you? If you were, it’s a good thing
I’m just about out of room for this installment. Besides, I’m
better at reporting than punditry.
I’m just sitting here with my fingers curled over the keyboard,
waiting for the next interesting site to jump off the screen.
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