Are We Having a Trend Yet?

Multimedia Reporter, October 1992

Did you ever wonder who decides when a trend is significant enough to trumpet? Nose rings? Men with beards? Well I'm declaring one. Some of you will probably argue that it's too soon. Others that's it's old news already. Picky. Picky. Picky.

We're talking, friends, about Electronic Publishing. I don't mean software and games. I mean information and ideas-- novels and non-fiction, magazines and manuals, and reference works and classics by the carload. And more interactive-educational multimedia marvels.

I know, I know, you haven't even bought a CD-ROM drive yet, don't like CD-I or CDTV, and can't imagine reading yourself to sleep with a Powerbook. But remember you don't have to turn out the light! The illumination comes from the screen. And it automatically falls asleep when you do, and even saves your place! So even if the market is still pretty small you can bet it's going to grow fast.

Every month brings a rash of new titles for all formats, from CD-ROM to Data Discman. The major book publishers are scrambling to get on board or have a major task force study underway. Besides everyone is going to want a CD player now so they can play with Kodak's new CD Photos. I'm gonna get me one of those fast new Pioneer players with a six-disc mini-changers. Once the price comes down, or course.

And, yes, established publishers will grab up most of the action, but there's still room right now for the little guy riding on his own Mac. How about So You Wanna Be a Rock N' Roll Star?

The first CD books were encyclopedias and other reference works, but that is rapidly changing. There are hundreds of titles on CD-ROM now, with CD-I and CDTV trying to catch up. And they're aimed at consumers as well as schools and libraries. Baseball and Science Fiction. Health guides and Erotica. Contemporary history and World Affairs. Desert Storm. Exotic Japan. Electronic coffee-table photo books.

Warner New Media just released View from Earth, the first in a series of interactive disks based on Time Life Book's Voyage Through the Universe series,

Gallopade Publishing, out of Georgia, is announcing eight new interactive titles. There's one on Alligators, Death Valley, Volcanoes, the Discovery of Pluto, and an American Indian Dictionary.

And there's Eastgate Systems, which publishes original interactive novels that allow every reader to take a different path through the story. Readers of Afternoon, a story, by Michael Joyce or Victory Garden by Stuart Moulthrop will set up their own links and paths, and no two readers will read the same story. Obviously this approach has some drawbacks:

"You can consider alternatives until the cows come home," says Nancy Kaplan, a professor at the University of Texas. "How much diversity can text sustain without becoming a muddle?"

"We're at a very early stage," admits Eastgate's Mark Bernstein. "It took two or three generations for the book to reach it's modern form. It may take 50 to 75 years of experimentation for hypertext."

The Voyager company followed a more traditional approach in publishing it's new line of hypercard based "Expanded Books" for Apple's Powerbook platform. Among the current offerings are Susan Faludi's best seller Backlash, The complete hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Jurassic Park (complete with Dinosaur grunts). Next year the company plans to add 40 more titles.

These electronic books look a lot like books in print. The publishers feel it's easier that way for readers to make the transition to the new media.

"We're trying to honor the author's voice and the traditions of publishing", says project manager Sandra Meuller, "So we tried to bring as much familiarity to the design as possible. "

The electronic features remain hidden until you ask for them, but they are useful. You can type notes in the margin, mark a selected passage, search out any word or phrase or get the table of contents by holding down the mouse on the chapter heading. You can also carry a whole stack of books under one arm when you travel.

There are no established retail outlets so far, and most sales are through mail order catalogs. "The first three books are approaching sales of 2000," notes partner Jonathon Turrell, "but it's hard to say if it's a market or a novelty. We won't know until we release more books."

Random House wants to find out too. Sometime this fall it's complete Modern Library will also be available on discs.

The current confusion over formats is inhibiting, and a consortium of European publishing companies is exploring techniques to enable multimedia publishing to version multiple platforms.

This could mean adapting existing CD-ROM, CDTV, CD-I, Electronic Book Format, or MPC formats to run special "translator" software so a single application could run on a wide range of delivery systems. Or, it could mean a focus on once-only authoring techniques: A digital resource versioned to a variety of different platforms -- maybe even analog systems such as videodiscs.

Look for some more electronic magazines before long as well. Already Verbum has some company. Nothing quite so hip, of course. Nautilus is a monthly CD that's more of a catalog than a magazine. It costs $9.95 an issue, and features new "software demos, fonts, music beds and sounds and many digitized photos and images for your personal use."

Ariel Publishing is launching MacMegaDisk, a similar product distributed every month on a floppy that includes the company's own offerings. A subscription runs $54.95 a year.

Of course BMUG's disk of the month has been around forever, and MacWorld just introduced an on-line service that's free, available in computer stores, where you can bring in a floppy and dub off demos and info on services and suppliers that interest you. So who needs 'em! Hmm, what fonts are they offering?

Meanwhile the editor of MacWorld is also speculating in print on what an electronic version of his magazine will look like. Newsweek and Playboy can't be far behind.

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