Rather than just relying on DRM-fixated business models, publishers also would do well to consider other approaches. Safari Books Online, written up in eContent, is an example of the possibilities. Excerpt:

Safari Books Online, a joint venture between technology book publishing giants O'Reilly and Pearson Technologies, has managed to succeed in the ebook market where so many others have failed. Rather than cutting a wide swath, the company focuses on targeting specific markets where users need quick access to accurate technology information.

Safari Books offers an individual subscription service for $14.99 or $19.99 per month (corporate and library subscriber prices vary) to access the full text of books from publishers such as O'Reilly, Que, Sams, Microsoft Press, New Riders, Peachpit, and other top names in the computer book industry. The system works like an electronic library. After conducting a search, subscribers can download and then view the entire book, with privileges to add a certain number of books each month and place them on an electronic bookshelf with the total number of downloads dependent upon the subscription level.

For World eBook Week, some British students teamed up to write an e-book. Details:

One group of students took part in an e-book project at the beginning of the month, where pupils at the Ascot school write a book with other pupils in Berkshire.

After writing a chapter, it is e-mailed to the next school for them to do the same before passing it on again. Other highlights to help celebrate the week involved the junior school dressing up as their favourite book characters and workshops with children's author Eric Maddern.

The author spent two whole days telling the children how he constructs his stories, before helping them produce their own tales.

Junior school teacher, Helen Buckett, who helped co-ordinate the projects said: "Reading is such an important activity and World Book Week has given us lots of opportunities to explore the world of books and have lots of fun at the same time."

Costly digital rights management does not merely jack up prices for book publishers, distributors and readers. DRM also threatens diversity of content.

Pamela Turner, content director of the Content Reserve distribution unit of OverDrive, appears to blame DRM costs at least in part for OverDrive's new charge on publishers, which will result in storage fees of $300 a year for one-book publishers. Ms. Turner's solution? Take your book elsewhere. But with OverDrive dominating so much of the e-book business with dealings with some 700 publishers, that is a blow to the small guy. Ms. Turner along the way also makes an unwitting argument for a universal consumer format. She alludes to the burden of OverDrive supporting four formats. One hopes that OverDrive president and CEO Steve Potash, also president of the Open eBook Forum, will soon release at least a tentative schedule for OeBF's development of a UCF.

Given the high costs of DRM, it is crucial that the exact fees be known, and if OverDrive won't disclose them or refuses to because of NDAs or for other reasons, then anti-trust investigators should get to work. Meanwhile here is the full text of Ms. Turner's transmission to the eBook Community List, a copy of response to Michael Ward of Hidden Knowledge:

I have been in New York promoting eBook systems and content to the public library community on the East Coast. Returned just today to read Michael, Jon's and others comments and posted messages. Just to clarify a few points about Content Reserve and to provide an explanation that you and others might wish to consider.

First of all, it's not a secret that our margin on CR eBooks is only 5%. If we receive 50% of the SRP, we pass on 45% to each retailer. We do have to charge them the DRM licensing fee and return that to the third party software partner. Retailers must also incur bank credit card fees of up to 4-5% for real time credit card verification and fraud prevention can add more to that, too. So retailers earn about a 40% markup. They do better on buying print books non-returnable and getting 50%. Real time credit card fees aren't a necessity at that point.

There seems to be some naiveté within the independent eBook pub group about maintaining the services at a large global marketplace such as ours. The immediate transfer of pricing into dozens of other currencies, supporting geographic territorial rights and DRM for four different formats and real time access to 700+ network members. There have always been high associated costs with maintaining a privately hosted login/password account for each supplier. OverDrive absorbed these costs for 3+ years in order to attract more new publishing suppliers. Subsidizing these costs and pushing DRM expenses exclusively onto the retail and library outlets was never a permanent or equitable solution. And the costs passed on for our continual development programming to support each new software technology upgrade cannot also be the sole responsibility of those who are providing the secure downloads.

Every CR publisher will need to adjust its strategy to accommodate these costs of operating an eBook publishing program. There are promotional costs that need to be budgeted here. OverDrive also provides to each supplier, secure archival storage of their commercial unencrypted files. They experience these same costs from their print production partners and will need to realize them as necessary expenditures for their secure digital products as well.

When publishers experience higher costs for paper and production, they realignment their retail pricing to allow for these infrastructure expenses. Publishers will have to consider these tactics as they reevaluate their business plan.

If publishers are disappointed with their eBook sales and have a hard time justifying expenses beyond acquisition, editorial and marketing expenditures, they should first determine if they have best utilized the tools offered. If electronic documents sell better from their own sites without DRM restrictions, that shouldn't be a surprise to any in the industry and reflects a conflict in use models. If titles are not valuable enough to warrant rights management, then they are likely not suitable for Content Reserve marketing and support sales. The sad truth is that a handful of my 100s of suppliers really send me any promotional or digital catalogs to be shared with buyers. From my ongoing analysis more online promo to the buyers is imperative for optimal features within catalogs. Unless publishers can magically and creatively reach potential consumers by other methods.

Projectgutenberg.info still points to the controversial Project Gutenberg 2 site. But to his credit, Project Gutenberg CEO Greg Newby has taken a good, hard look at PG 2's copyright practices and raised serious questions. Among them:

The copyright claim that PG-2 (aka WorldEBookLibrary.com and others) has added to many public domain eBooks from PG and elsewhere is bogus. We regularly assert such items as public domain for our copyright clearances. Adding HTML or other markup, and similar "sweat of the brow" activities does not create a copyrighted item from a public domain item.

For anyone to repackage public domain items from PG by stripping out the header etc. is definitely permitted by the PG header. However, for any sort of "partner" site to do this is inappropriate. Because such treatment of the PG eBooks pre-dates the recent announcement of PG-2, and I was previously unaware of it, I expect that this oversight will be fixed and proper PG credit and headers will be added to these items, and also that "value added" by adding markup etc. will find its way back to the PG collection.

Michael Hart, the besieged founder of Project Gutenberg, took time off from his Hawaiian vacation to challenge the recommendation that PG have a strong, truly independent board to avoid future debacles like PG 2, aka Kentucky Fried Gutenberg.

We replied, volunteer Juliet Sutherland worried that PG 2 is copyrighting PG work, while another PG participant, James Linden, questioned Michael's veracity on such key details as the number of books the project is turning out. Meantime the Kentucky Fried PG debate made Slashdot after LISNews linked to our KFC article. In my open letter to Michael--sent to a Gutenberg list--I quoted a hardworking PG volunteer:

I didn't slave all these hours just to help out Michael's friend for a commercial purpose. One of the many things I did was to write the words for an icon that appears on the PG 2 site: "Wherever you live, wherever you go, it's always with you--your free personal library." But at the time I thought it was just for a profit-free Gutenberg site. It's sad to see my work used for a commercial site operating under the Gutenberg name. I did this because I believe in Michael's vision of free books for all. I think he's lost sight of his own vision.

While you may formally report to the existing PGLAF board, I doubt that the present crew will stand up to you no matter how many degrees they hold. They are all your pals. I deeply respect Greg [Newby, Michael's CEO], but in the end, given your control of the trademark and the rest, he can show only so much independence.

Yes, as suggested above, the biggest issue with the trademark isn't so much money as it is power. I wonder how far the board could get if you yanked the trademark away. With a truly empowered board, Project Gutenberg could more easily raise money, which, in turn, would make it easier to recruit volunteers and expand in other ways.

This is a treat. We've always been keen on e-books as an efficient way to spread minority-related titles around--and now we can cite some numbers. Up from Slavery, also available via Project Gutenberg and sites such as Blackmask, led the list of the most popular titles at Questia during February. Yes, that was Black History month--not the worst time for the autobiography of Booker T. Washington. But the event is noteworthy just the same, because other Afro-American-related titles fared well, too. TeleRead's vision is of a library system that would bring mainstream classics and other books to all, but at the same time offer those of special interest to minorities, many of whom are cash-strapped. Another reason to fight for the public domain and against e-book gouges! Other information from a press release:

...books on famous African-Americans and other African-American related subjects were some of the most widely read on the Questia online library of more than 48,000 books and 390,000 articles. To see what else made the February list, check out the complete list of best read ebooks at www.top20ebooks.com

Sometimes even heroes sell out accidentally, and hopefully that's what happened with Project Gutenberg--if not in deed, then in appearance. Far better than a Valenti-level sellout to the dark side. Yes, Michael Hart is still one of my heroes for starting Project Gutenberg years ago to get the classics on the Net in defiance of elite greedsters, who, if they really cared about literature and learning, wouldn't have purchased merchandise like the DMCA or the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. In a sick way those Hollywood-bought laws were tribute to the work of people like Michael. I totally agree with his theory that some greedsters at the top will rig the rules just at the time when new technology has the most potential to spread the art and information around. While I believe in copyright, I also believe in the public domain. Michael is Mr. Public Domain.

In fact, that's exactly why Project Gutenberg 2 troubles me, because it at least appears to be a sellout of some valuable ideals, and Mr. Public Domain still does not grasp the implications. Proprietary DRMed formats like Adobe, encouraged by the existence of DMCAish laws, are among the ways the rules get rigged. Michael had always championed plain ASCII because he found it durable and nonproprietary. In the case of Project Gutenberg 2, though, he lent the Gutenberg name to a commercial Web site that charges membership fees for access to material in the Adobe format, the ultimate anti-ASCII. And the name suggested that the site could well be a successor to the original Gutenberg. Michael keeps saying he telegraphed his full intentions well in advance to key volunteers. They continue to dispute him on that, and they are equally skeptical of his claim that he simply wanted to augment the flagship Gutenberg site by allowing a different approach. He also notes that so far the person running Project Gutenberg 2 hasn't made that much money at public-domain-related activities and has actually been giving away membership fees to, say, the vision-impaired. Michael further says that "I have not received anything" from Mr. Gutenberg 2 and in fact actually pays rent when staying with Mr. PG 2 in Hawaii.

Favoritism

Sorry. That still won't cut it. Whether or not Michael would personally profit in the future off Gutenberg 2, directly or indirectly, he bypassed key volunteers to the benefit of his buddy Mr. PG 2 in defiance of Michael's "bottoms up" philosophy. No matter what the deal, regardless of whether Gutenberg and its pathetic spinout could keep swapping files from here to Kingdom come, what Michael did was wrong.

Despite Project Gutenberg 2's showy home page, the results are hardly impressive. Checking out some of the site's HTML files, I told a friend, "Looks like David Moynihan's work." David Moynihan, of course, is the owner of the Blackmask site, my favorite pusher when it comes to public domain works. He and I at times disagree on copyright issues, but he has enriched the Net through his scanning and through presentation of the classics in a variety of formats rather than relying so heavily on bloated proprietary dreck in the Adobe vein.

HTML borrowed from Blackmask

Sure enough, it turns out that, minus credit, Gutenberg 2 picked up David's HTML coding associated with such books as Dr. Nikola Returns. David tells me:

All the Nikola books are titles I've scanned from first editions and donated to PG. It's cool, though. The guy bought the CD and has a pretty nice layout. People do this sort of thing fairly regularly (well, usually they just resell the CDs on eBay; which is the only reason I'm still on eBay, as I'll list next to anyone who's getting ridiculous, and if need be undercut them for spite). Not a problem, but as far as him making money from the PDF's, don't hold your breath.

For months Project Gutenberg volunteers have been polishing their main site, which today is at Gutenberg.net rather than the venerable Promo.net address. Now a flashy site has sprung up separately from Gutenberg.net. Called Project Gutenberg 2, it comes with a stylish layout and "Over 27,000 HTML eBooks to choose from." That's several times the 10,000 or so in the original Project Gutenberg. Mysterious, too, is the emphasis on Adobe format for paid members of Project Gutenberg 2--at complete odds with the strenuously nonproprietary approach of Gutenberg's past. The HTML is free. But you pay for membership to read the more than "60,000 PDF eBooks and eDocuments."

So have the most active of the Project Gutenberg volunteers been quietly slaving away to surprise the world with Project Gutenberg 2 while using Gutenberg.net as a decoy? Not exactly. It's news to them as well, including Charles Franks, head of the well-regarded Distributed Proofreaders, which is the main source of PG texts these days. Over the weekend a Project Gutenberg volunteer list was buzzing with all kinds of questions for PG founder Michael Hart, who personally owns the Project Gutenberg trademark.

$8.95 membership fee

The original Project Gutenberg makes its public material available to commercial sites such as Blackmask, which it should. The enigma here is why the name "Project Gutenberg 2" is used; mightn't there be some confusion here, when the original Gutenberg is supposed to be the main show? The response from Michael and defenders is that the words "Project Gutenberg" have shown up in such manifestations as "Project Gutenberg Australia." But they lack a name strongly implying that they are an organizational successor, complete with the all-important "2"--while the accompanying domain doesn't even include the 2, suggesting that one day that projectgutenberg.info might conceivably displace gutenberg.net. What's more, addresses such as gutenberg.net.au use country domains and follow the same noncommercial, open source model that we all know, love and expect of Michael Hart and Project Gutenberg. That's not all. For access to material in the proprietary PDF format, the new site charges individuals $8.95 a year, a low sum but rather in contradiction of the "free" approach that has characterized Gutenberg in the past, at least when The Name is invoked on The Site.

Other questions arise. For example, the person running PG 2 is John Guagliardo, a past president of the Hawaii Library Association, who, at one point, has been described as having invented "the idea of eBooks and eLibraries on his own, and then invited Project Gutenberg founder, Michael Hart, to speak at several of the HLA Annual Conferences, where they met in person." And yet in discussing the history of e-books, Michael hasn't exactly been playing up Guaglioardo's role. Clearly, however, as shown by a photograph on the site of Guagliardo Technologies, the two have been friends. Each year Michael takes a long vacation in Hawaii, his buddy Guaglioardo's turf. A little favoritism here?

Terms of use to be changed--following Charles Franks' questions

Significantly, too, Charles Franks has raised questions about the language in the Project Gutenberg 2 site's terms of service. On the "Terms and Conditions" page, the site read as follows while I was writing this blog item:

Ownership Notice

Unless otherwise noted, this website and all of the materials contained herein, including the HTML code, source code, and any other code used to generate any portion of this website, are the copyrighted property of World eBook Library and World eBook Library Consortia Members or of third parties who have licensed World eBook Library to use their property. None of the content or data found on this website may be reproduced, distributed, sold, transferred, or modified without the express written permission of World eBook Library provided, however, that users may reproduce a single copy of any webpage for their personal use...

Don't count on Palm Reader being available soon in Linux. From TeleRead supporter Margo Milner in France:

As you know, I am a Palm Digital Media fan. I know it's proprietary and all, but it works for me and my Pocket PC. I figured as long as I steered clear of Microsoft and Adobe, whose e-books I would no longer download on a bet, I was O.K.

Then I read your item about Evil Genius and his new PDA. So, Nick and I, who need a second PDA, looked into Sharp Zaurus. Impressive! We like it! And we're moving into open source applications and linux as fast as we can because I am so-o-o-o fed up with Microsoft.

The problem is that I want to read mainstream books as well as what's available out of copyright. So I wrote to Palm and asked why they didn't have a linux reader along with Microsoft and Mac.

Here's their reply, which I have permission to share:

"We would love to support Linux with the Palm Reader but currently the cost of developing one exceeds our resources. Hopefully in the future we will see a Linux Palm Reader."

I have no answer for this, but thought it might interest you.