[GregS]

nekokami many thanks, I have been going through the epub format (slowly) and digital signatures are well catered for within it. One of the things I will work towards is making an exlibris signature system so that you can stick it into the non-DRMed ebooks, along with shelving information, so that they may be organized on the the PC at least.

Steve Jordan I am not sure that I am reading the format correctly, but it looks like it may be able to incorporate TIE tags (Text Encoding Initiative), which may be very good news for textbook and serious scholarly works. Optional stylesheets seems the only deficit in the format, but that may be the result of nothing other than my poor attempts to understand the format.

In terms of giving shape to market, file format is critical, epub seems close enough to mobileread format that transforming it automatically would not be all that difficult. Buyers should not ever be concerned with formats, just the ebooks. Epub serves well for most fiction, there are a few things which should be mandatory (such as Section-chapter-paragraph numbered ids and unique IDs for the publication and edition - I would also add shelving information re the Universal Decimal system), but these things can be dealt with in the fullness of time.

Complex non-fiction is another matter, and that a standard that includes some form of PDF-like stylesheet that generates typographically true pages designed for the particular reader is not yet even on the drawing boards as far as I can find out. But again that needs time to emerge. Epub is to my mind THE critical keystone for providing a large and growing market in ebooks.

Aside from big publishers/retails, what you seem to be doing on your site is what I see as the true model for ebook publishing - the specialist publisher-retailer will I think be the backbone definition of the ebook publishing model.

The problem of advertising will not so easily be solved, yet the solution is not a biggy. Review eMagazines need to be produced - the problem is that for these to become viable the writer/editors need to make an income and such regular publications need to be cheap and with an easy subscription system.

That brings us to the one vital missing ingredient - micro-cash, a means of safely depositing real money on the net, and make easy transactions of small (a few dollars) and very small (a few cents or less) amounts. Transactions that are the electronic equivalent of opening a wallet and paying in cash.

I was looking at your site, and I have not read any science fiction for years, and despite not yet having a reader (and I cannot read off a computer screen), I was very tempted to buy a few, I don't have a credit card (I can't be trusted with one), and I will now setup and use paypal, however, while this is good enough for ebooks that are a few dollars it falls apart at sub-dollar prices (which is where public domain publishing should be), and it would positively fall apart at the small Ebook Review Magazine level where transaction costs would swallow up the price which should be for such a thing at less than 50 cents level.

That needs to be fixed, as I believe micro-cash could well support the minor publications on which genuine advertisement (via ebook review) could evolve - after all, if I set up such a emagazine, I would be paying readers to write reviews for it. I thus also need a simple means of paying them, what might be a very small per sale commission. Until that loop is secured we all stand behind a substantial barrier to further development.

As an example; my eMagazine sells for just 10cents, back issues for 5cents. Each issue has fifty reviews, as editor publisher I take 20% commission, and pay out 80% of the cover price (based on ebook providers actually forwarding the full cover price - why not they benefit from the reviews). That is 80% of 10cents = 8 cents divided by 50 or 0.16 cents for each reviewer for each magazine sold new, and 0.08 cents for each backissue sold.

Three thousand readers surrenders only $4.80 to each reviewer, hardly worth the effort. However, I get $60 per issue - I would be better off working a couple hours at MacDonalds. However if I had the prior interest, and the reviewers likewise, it may be enough to get things started. 30,000 regular readers produces $600 and $48 per article which is looking not too bad for the effort involved - greater factors of readership make it into a viable business.

We are a long way from that, but in terms of future advertising Review eMagazines are a natural way to expand the market - held back by the lack of a micro-cash system - I will write to paypal to see if they are interested in setting up a cash purse system, even if it was limited to just $50 it would work well enough. This is one aspect of a model we need to get in place. Review eMagazines for instance are not viable until we have something like this.

sanders I agree with you, big publishers are worried about nothing, of course if they severely overprice their products (as many do at the moment - they will create a blackmarket whether they are DRMed or not). nekokami on the last point raised - likewise.

Liviu_5"E-books need to have REALLY compelling benefits for people and this to me is still the big unanswered question. Who is going to offer those benefits? The publishers - well until they MUST, they won't as we well know from the music industry case, and from current practices..."

Until we had eink/epaper readers, there were mainly deficits, with DRMed ebooks no real benefits at all. But this changes dramatically when a device can be read for weeks, and library carried around, we have a way to go yet in providing more digital functionality in readers (such as proper shelving, fully referenced quoting and integration into a eCard system - but that will come).

The devices make the difference - they first the first time since Gutenberg pressed movable type onto paper, provide a substantial improvement in recording, storing and apprehending human thought in written words.

I will repeat - until now the best form for keeping complex concepts was on paper - that has changed, it is a revolution or as Steve Jordan says "the ebook IS the 21st Century".