Gernert says that electronic publishers have approached Grisham, but none has succeeded in persuading him to go digital, partly because the needs of author and e-publisher don't, as Gernert sees it, entirely coincide. "For an electronic publisher to say that they're publishing Grisham is instant legitimacy and instant publicity and instant viability," he says. "As an author you would want a story to go on as many computers, Web sites and devices as possible."

Furthermore, heavyweight authors often prefer to do what most writers dream of doing but can't for financial reasons: devote themselves to writing. They'd prefer to leave the business of promoting a book and getting it to readers to a publisher. "Writers are supposed to be writing books," say Chuck Verrill, an agent who edited King for 10 years at Viking. "Publishers are printers and foot the marketing bill. The other problem for authors is distribution. Publishers know how to distribute books." As many have observed, if King wanted to get into the business, he could certainly afford to buy his own publishing house.

Nevertheless, authors and their representatives are not indifferent to the lure of 50 percent royalties -- they just want to see the kinks ironed out first. "There will be some serious attention paid to e-publishing royalties," says Gernert. "I think we will be having a very different and interesting conversation about this issue in three years. I think a lot is going to change." And traditional publishers have taken note as well. "Part of the problem will be finding a royalty structure that works for us, for the agents and for the authors," says Kirshbaum.

Traditional publishers like Time Warner and Simon & Schuster obviously have no intention of loosening their hold on the reins as the book industry enters the digital era. If anything, they will seek to expand their dominion through this new medium. "I don't look at electronic publishing as a threat," Kirshbaum says. "I look at this as an opportunity for publishers to develop a supplement to their print business. On balance, we'll hold onto our authors and we will exploit their electronic possibilities."

As a result, e-book publishers who haven't already got a toehold in print book publishing may wind up with lists limited to public domain classics and books that print publishers wouldn't touch anyway. Vanity presses, who for a fee print up unpublished books (books that often wind up moldering in boxes in the authors' basements and attics), may find their business undercut by "print on demand" publishers like iUniverse.com.

The Campbell, Calif., company takes an author's electronic manuscript and converts it to QuarkXPress files so that copies of the book can then be printed and bound. Once ordered by a reader or bookstore, an iUniverse.com title is then manufactured in an "on-demand" printer (which resembles an enormous photocopier) built by Lightning Print, a subsidiary of Ingram, a national book distributor.

Authors pay iUniverse.com a minimum of $99 to publish their books and they have the option of purchasing a range of services in addition; publishing with a full editorial review, for example, costs $299. "Our fear is that incredible numbers of titles are being published" by traditional book publishers, says iUniverse.com publisher Kenzi Sugihara, a veteran of Bantam Books and Random House with 30 years of experience in the field, "but the exposure and selection of titles is narrowing. We feel we're stepping into the gap."

The peril, of course, is that the lists of electronic publishers will become virtual slush piles, refugee camps for books that only their authors could love, such as Fatbrain.com's "Solo Explorations in Male Masturbation" and iUniverse.com's "Chocolate Sauce and Malice." Although their combined lists comprise 7,200-odd titles, iUniverse.com or Fatbrain.com have seen few, if any, of their books reviewed in major media.

However, iUniverse.com, which offers 20 percent royalties and insists that it does sometimes reject books, can boast at least one break-out success (at least by its own modest terms). Natasha Munson, a New Jersey real estate agent who grew impatient waiting for New York publishers to respond to her manuscript and went with the e-publisher instead, has sold several thousand copies of her inspirational title "Life Lessons for My Black Sisters."

Steven Gooderich, the company's strategic channel program director, was intrigued by the title one day when he was on the site, read it and showed it to his colleagues. "We were all impressed by it," Gooderich said. He then alerted a Barnes & Noble buyer. (B&N owns a 49 percent interest in iUniverse.com.) "I will share a book with anyone who will listen," he said. Munson "fits the mold we want," adds Sugihara. "She came to us as a novice who wanted us to publish her and we saw her commercial value."

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