eBookBase launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair
October 8, 2003
By DRM Watch Staff

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Franklin Electronic Publishers and MobiPocket (which is part owned by Franklin) announced the launch of eBookBase, a system for distributing publishers' content in MobiPocket's format, which works on several different portable device types, to online retailers. eBookBase uses Franklin's proprietary DRM scheme.

eBookBase is part of an effort by Franklin to shore up its position in the eBook market as the market both consolidates further and gravitates away from special-purpose handheld devices like Franklin's eBookMan towards general-purpose PDAs. eBookBase resembles a cross between Overdrive's service-provider offerings for retailers (such as publishers' own eBook sites) and the now-defunct DigitalOwl, which offered somewhat similar capabilities to eBookBase but on a licensed software basis instead of as a managed service. DigitalOwl had interesting technology, but it failed because publishers did not have the critical mass of internal digital content infrastructure to be able to integrate the vendor's software easily.

Franklin and MobiPocket should garner revenue from some combination of the publishers that distribute their content through eBookBase and (less likely) the online retailers that sell the content; several of each have already signed up. Perhaps more importantly, the resulting wider selection of content available on eBookBase should help increase interest in MobiPocket's cross-platform MobiPocket Reader software. In all, eBookBase looks like an astute application of Robert Metcalfe's "network effect" in the eBook market.

Tools:

Add www.drmwatch.com to your favorites Add www.drmwatch.com to your browser search box IE 7 | Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.x Receive news via our XML/RSS feed