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

This, and all, issue of the "Digital Publishing Association News"
is sponsored by the Digital Publishing Association and its member
publications. "Digital 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.

The"Quills" are in full swing....

I want to mention again, in case this is your first edition of the
DPA newsletter, 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 hope to 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 b 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.

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 open for submission to eight.
We need offers from within the DPA membership and beyond (non-DPA
members with the appropriate qualifications will be considered as
judges) to serve as judges. Judges will serve outside their own
individual categories. For example, if you publish a regular
fiction magazine or anthology, you could easily 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 easily serve
as a judge of any category of literature. I encourage ALL DPA
members to volunteer to serve as a judge in some category. With the
expected number of entries this year, it is imperative that we get
a large panel of judges from which to chose. 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 my volunteering 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.  

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am 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, I 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 mailboxes. 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...

I received a fax from Chris Fisher of the Atwood Group (11827 W.
112th St., Overland Park, KS 66210; 913-469-1110; FAX 913-469-0806)
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." I 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 I 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:
209-883-8347).

While the DPA is certainly not in a position, financially, to
attend - much less exhibit! - I certainly hope that some of the
membership in the area (I know Ted Husted [UserWare] and Paul
Peacock [FloppyBack] are located in the area) will be able to
attend the conference. I would love to be able to publish a report
of the event in a future DPA News. In any case, as I have observed
before, I 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 of 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 (800) 666-0330 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...

That's it for this month. This issue is a little shorter than usual
due to the rush of activities surrounding the Quill Awards and
their publicity. Let's all pitch in and spread the word. Post the
notices on your local BBS and anywhere else you can. Also, remember
to volunteer for the judging. It shouldn't take more than a few
hours of your time and it is imperative for the success of the
Quills to get a variety of judges for as many viewpoints on the
materials as possible. With the Digital Quill Awards cranking up
and the activities in preparation for November's "Electronic
Publishing Month" festivities, things will stay busy as DPA HQ for
some time. Stay tuned, join in, and spread the word! See you
next month.

