This is the software required by e-book publishers to take their existing prepress files or retargeted files, secure them, and make them available via the Internet to their distributors and booksellers. The library software enables academic, corporate or public libraries to turn their online Web sites into online libraries of e-books. The reader software is used by consumers to read, search, annotate, and organize their e-books. This software runs on notebook PCs, handheld PCs, and dedicated handheld e-book readers. The key to those two Internet applications was open standards.
Open standards enable thousands of individuals and companies to work together to make a new medium.
If the e-book industry continues into the next decade as a world of balkanized proprietary systems, it will be a long time before consumers and publishers will be able to reap the benefits of an interoperable world of content, stores, devices and software. Kent State University Permission is granted for non-profit educational uses. Authors retain all commercial rights to their articles.