MS, Penguin to publish eBooks
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced partnerships with book publishers in the United Kingdom, France and Italy to create and distribute thousands of popular titles on CD-ROM, and eventually online.
The eBooks will be published using Microsoft Reader, the first product available for PCs running on the Windows operating system to include the company's ClearType technology. Microsoft says ClearType improves font resolution on LCD screens, enhancing on-screen reading to a level that 'approaches the convenience and quality of paper.'
As part of the publishing venture, announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Penguin Books Ltd., a Pearson company, said it will roll out 1,000 titles onto CD-ROM from its English-language Penguin Classics, including books by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.
Each CD-ROM will include more than a dozen -- and up to 30 -- books, said Andrew Rosenheim, managing director for Penguin in London.
'I've always been skeptical of reading books on screen,' Rosenheim said. 'For the first time it really is close, or comparable, to reading a book on paper.'
Using the Italian version of Microsoft Reader, Italian publisher Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA will sell eBooks and popular magazines on its 'eBookstore' Web site. Thousands of Microsoft Reader-compatible French-language titles such as Le Cid, by Pierre Corneille and Notre-Dame de Paris (better known in its English translation, The Hunchback of Notre Dame), by Victor Hugo, will be available on CD-ROM -- and eventually for Internet download -- from the Havas Group publisher and the Web site Editions 00h00.com ('zero hour dot com').
Microsoft also announced at the book fair its founding sponsorship of the Frankfurt eBook Awards, which will annually recognize literary and technological excellence in electronic publishing.
The eBooks will be sold by software and book retailers, though no pricing information is yet available.
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