Not only is Adobe beefing up its eBook efforts, the eBook portal, eBookAd.com, has created three separate alliances with online electronic booksellers to offer titles in the Hiebook format.
As we reported last month, eBookAd.com is teaming up with Seoul-based ebook, to prepare for the introduction of the Hiebook, an eBook device, into the North American market. The Hiebook combines an XML based, OEB-compliant eBook reader, an MP3 player, a digital audio recorder, PDA functions, and games into one item. For eBook content, it will use a new format, “hiebook Reader.” However, eBookAd reps say this format complies with the Open eBook (OEB) publication standard, meaning publishers who have already developed OEB content should have an easy time preparing it for download and display on the Hiebook.
The Hiebook will initially support Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME and NT. Support for Mac OS is currently under development, according to Dustin Revin of eBookAd.com.
“Solid partnerships, such as the ones we are announcing, are extremely important to our business model,” said eBookAd.com Executive Vice President Dustin Revin, in a statement. “This first round of premier partners is especially gratifying as each one has unique talents and has excelled in several different areas. And this is only the beginning of our strategy to make hiebook-formatted titles the most widely available format for eBooks.”
eBookAd’s partners are: Fictionwise.com, which launched in June 2000, and focuses on fiction eBooks; CyberRead, which offers trade and independent published books, magazines, novels, and comics in electronic format; and BookSurge.com, which just went online this week with the mission of allowing Internet based publishers to offer eBooks in the reader’s preferred format. In conjunction with their sister company, Digitz.net, BookSurge is also offering Print On Demand paperbacks which are printed and shipped within 48 hours of an order.
When Hiebook titles become available on the site in the summer of 2001, there will be an estimated 10,000 titles available, according to BookSurge co-founder Mitchell Davis.