P-publishers hijack E-book Awards
The finalists of the Frankfurt eBook Awards are out and the e-book community is not pleased. Nine of the works are from major trade publishers such as Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, Penguin Putnam, and Random House. Independent ePublishers are dismayed but unsurprised that so few of their entries, which vastly outnumbered the trade-published titles, won the favour of the celebrity judges.
The e-book community, which had such high hopes for these awards to help establish e-books and e-publishers as significant players in the book industry is besides itself. Most assumed that the awards might be hi-jacked by the New York publishing barons but still hoped that a better showing would be made. It was not to be. Some blame the rule change half way through the year to be the culprit. Originally, the publisher had to have published twenty books by different authors in order to qualify. The limit was later lowered to ten. At the time, this made many small e-publishers happy. Now they are crying that it favoured the big New York publishers who didn't have enough electronic books to enter. This, I believe is untrue. Most New York publishers could deliver twenty electronic books within a week if they wanted, as most books begin that way today anyway. Another sticking point was that many of the books entered by the New York publishers weren't originally electronic books. Well, it seems they all were. Granted some were offered as electronic versions only days before the print version but that was the rule.
Was this a waste of time for small e-publishers? Probably. Did it help the industry? Probably not.
The two independently-published titles that survived to the final round of judging are Paradise Square by E.M. Schorb, published by Denlinger's Publishers Ltd., and Extension du domaine de la Lutte by Michel Houellebecq, from the French ePublisher 00h00.com.
The Frankfurt eBook Awards are the brainchild of Dick Brass, vice president for technology development at Microsoft and the leader of the team that developed Microsoft Reader. Microsoft is contributing the lion's share of the funds for the $100,000 grand prize and the five $10,000 prizes, which will be handed out October 20 at an invitation-only ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. (The ceremony will be broadcast live on the Web at http:// www.iebaf.org.) Microsoft's goals in sponsoring the awards are "to support and encourage achievements in this medium for its own sake, as well as to promote interest in the widespread availability of high-quality eBook titles," Brass says.
Latest Articles