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THE OEDIPUS SYNDROME: BLIND INTENTIONS - The Present
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After unsuccessfully marshaling their forces against the growing threat of Internet book sellers, old-fashioned book clubs now are facing a new challenge: Electronic Publishing!

Although still in its infancy, E-Publishing has recently taken off as major publishing houses and large technology companies, including Microsoft who follows its philosophy of partnering with companies no matter their size, large or small with its innovative concept, ContentReserve, have jumped on board.

The book-club market garnered a strong following over its nearly 75-year history by catering to middle America, where bookstores--until very recently--were few and far between I remember joining the clubs and waiting with baited breath until I received the several books that I had purchased for $1 plus postage with only a miniscule commitment to buying a few more books in return for my bonanza in reading!

What was the first tremor in the industry was the rise of the brick-and-mortar superstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble with Amazon.com following them in the stretch, so to speak, a breaking out on the Internet that was to not only change how books were sold but to bury the very soul of book clubs forever. Now, the uncertainty is whether publishing houses and authors, of which we are one of that fast growing group, will want to continue giving book clubs the same one sided, lucrative deals to distribute titles once the industry sees the viability of the E-Book, the download market.

But, at the same time, the right strategy could present e-publishing a golden opportunity for book clubs to leap into the digital age by leveraging their tremendous subscriber base onto the Net but only if they heed the blatant warnings circling all around them.

Here at 4pointspress.com, we feel that e-publishing is going to allow us new vistas to create whole kinds of outlets. Currently seven partner retail sites preview and sell our publications. These kinds of e-Book retailers use the Web for what it does best: guide people with a common interest to one central place - the brick less and mortar less storefront. Caught flat-footed when Amazon and other online pulp booksellers took the Internet by storm, pulp book clubs, by rethinking other content mediums, like e-Books, and restructuring their sales techniques may still afford themselves time to prepare for the e-publishing onslaught.

Of course there are still some security and piracy concerns that have to be overcome, as there are standard technologies that must be created to meet the consumers' expectations for quality when downloading and reading books on monitor screens and on portable devices. But So far, while not content cannot be completely locked into a "lock box", publishing on the Internet, thanks to the security systems provided by our Partners at Microsoft, ContentReserve and Adobe's PDF format, is not as hazardous as it once was.

The proof is that this online challenge has bitten into book clubs' bottom line. According to a 1998 study done by the Book Industry Study Group and the American Booksellers Association, book clubs' market share fell to 18 percent in 1998 from a high of 20.3 percent in 1997. Who was the main culprit for this decline? Why Internet pulp and e-Book sales of course, which posted gains of more than 300 percent in 1998. That was the start of runaway gains in the e-Book industry. "E-publishing could be just one more thing chipping away at their dominance," said a source at one of the largest New York publishers.

So, save a forest!!!!! Buy E-Books!!!!!