Other e-publishers see the conflict as something more venal than the clash between lofty literary standards and the desire to celebrate and promote ingenuity. It also represents the collision of a small, fairly intimate community of small-business people and authors with some large, intimidating corporations that want to secure a piece of what could be a substantial market. Book publishers don't want to be taken by surprise, as the music industry was by the advent of the MP3 file format and Napster, which allowed users to download music for free.

One e-book luminary, who wishes to remain nameless, says that everyone in the e-community has been discussing the fact that Simon & Schuster, Random House and iPublish support Microsoft ClearType. "The books that have been picked as finalists are predominantly published by publishers who supported ClearType, so lots of people are saying that this is totally a corporate boondoggle, that this was a way to get Microsoft and those publishers a little more press." The IeBAF's Mollman finds no merit in this rumor. "The ClearType was sort of an add-on after the awards were way down the line. I think most of the award submissions that we got were in Rocket-eBooks, Glass Books and SoftBooks." Mollman insists that the Frankfurt awards "were not set up as a promotion for Microsoft. The awards were set up for the promotion of e-books."

That's not what indie judge Eberhard thinks. "The whole awards thing is distorted, and Microsoft hijacked the awards for its own benefit. I was talking to Alberto Vitale three or four months ago at a conference, and he pointed out that basically his paycheck is paid by Microsoft. To me, that's saying it without saying it."

If indeed a battle has begun, the spoils are still fairly hypothetical. A recent survey by Seybold Research indicated considerable reader resistance to the new format -- only 12 percent of respondents said they were "likely" to spend money on an e-book or e-book device, and only 12 percent would read a book for pleasure on a personal digital assistant, or PDA, such as a Palm Pilot. Today, e-book reading devices (such as the recently unveiled REB-1100 and REB-1200 from Gemstar) cost between $199 and $600, and many e-books from the big publishing houses tend to be more expensive than the hardcover editions. According to Publishers Weekly, there are only 20,000 e-readers in the general populace to date, and the top e-book sellers tend toward science fiction, technology, business and romance -- not exactly book-award-winning fare.

Currently, Rance of Online Originals admits, "e-book sales are pretty low, but they have doubled this past year. I think it is the technology." To his mind, the problem has to do with the fact that "people have grown up reading books, and many people find it hard to believe that you'd want to consume text in any other way. We're talking about a new medium, in the same way that video is different from cinema. Different types of genres and writing will emerge from it." Eberhard couldn't agree more. "The whole beauty of e-publishing is that it allows so many more books to get published, and allows publishers to take chances on books that they wouldn't otherwise do."

But first e-books have to catch on with consumers, and Rose doesn't think that will happen until reading devices come down in price. Rance pinpoints quality as another issue. "We need to be giving people content that they really want -- that's why Stephen King was so successful. He was giving readers something that they wanted, and they couldn't get it any other way. If you look at what's available at most e-book sites at the moment, even at the Barnes & Noble Web site, you don't go, 'Wow, I've got to have that!'"

A cursory survey of e-books available from independent e-publishers reveals works by first-time authors whose imaginations and ambitions inspire them to meld too many genres into one narrative (call it innovative, or just the inability to find a sales handle) or whose writing often simply isn't good enough to capture the enthusiasm of New York publishing houses.

And so far, p-book authors have been slow to flock to independent e-publishers. But that is slowly changing. Online Originals has just signed up a series of five new short stories by Frederick Forsyth, bestselling author of "The Odessa File." "This is something of a coup for us," says Rance. "It's really the biggest name author to have done anything exclusively on the Web since Stephen King." Novelist Fay Weldon is following suit, publishing her latest work, "Woodworm," in serial form through the political Web site yougov.com, with no plans to publish it in print. Eberhard predicts that "as the e-book market grows, more and more writers will begin to experiment and publish this way."

It remains to be seen how either awards ceremony will impact book buyers. Eberhard suspects that members of "the IeBAF will likely ignore the Independent e-Book Awards. They'll act like theirs is the real one." But he's confident that the Independent e-Book Awards "will be one of the valuable tools that readers will look at to select what to read. This award will garner some prestige, for it encourages those things about e-books that make them unique. It's got to encourage creativity in the way e-books allow creativity, and it's got to encourage the creativity of the publishers, or even [these publishers] taking chances ... that paper publishers wouldn't do."

Rose wholeheartedly agrees with Eberhard. "Frankfurt just isn't the thing that I think our industry needs. While the International eBook Awards are an important first step, there's room for another kind of show -- the Independent e-Book Awards. I think the small publishers and authors desperately deserve and need it."

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