The career novelist

Electronic rights-, power source or static?

had a lot less heat under it than it had a year earlier. The reason?
Multimedia has not yet turned into the expected bonanza.
In fact, some publishers are already getting out of the electronic
publishing game. The Putnam-Berkley Group sold its electronic
division in April, 1995, and others are sure to follow. Who can blame
them? The capital investment is huge (usually six-figures per title)
and so far a mere handful of CD-ROMs have made money.
The rights battle has cooled off a lot, too. Most publishers will
agree to table the issue of royalties on electronic versions, or at
least to give authors the highest prevailing future rate—whatever
that may turn out to be. They are also mostly settling for a first-look
option on multimedia.
Soon, they may not even care about that. The war is ending not
because one side or the other scored a decisive win, but because
fast-changing media technologies may be rendering the whole ugly
debate pointless. That is progress for you.

Electronic Publishers

Book publishers like to claim thatthey are content providers in all

media. There is some truth to that assertion, but in the race for

electronic-publishing leadership itis too early to say who will win.

Book publishers are up against scores of start-ups, software devel-

opers, TV networks, movie studios,

Many of the most promising are to

San Francisco's "Multimedia Gulch

contenders:

ABC-CLIO

Adams Media

Allegro New Media

Anjujar Communication

Technologies

Applied Optical Media

Arnowitz Studios

Arome Interactive

and even telephone companies.

be found not in New York, but in

" Here is a partial list of current

Attica Cybernetics Inc.

Big Top Productions, LP

Books That Work

Bowker/Reed Reference Electronic

Broderbund Software Inc.

Bureau of Electronic Publishing

Inc.

Carole Marsh Family CD-ROM