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What will be the landmark first book to be published simultaneously in paper and electronic-book editions? A new translation of the Bible? William Gibson's latest dispatch from the future?
Guess again. It's Monica's Story.
Thursday, St. Martin's Press and Nuvomedia -- the makers of the Rocket eBook -- will announce the publication in digital form of the biography of the most written-about paramour in history, Monica Lewinsky.
As the president moved down the roped-off line of guests ... [Clinton] suddenly spotted [Lewinsky], and, as she says, "Gave me the full Bill Clinton. It was this look. It's the way he flirts with women.... He undressed me with his eyes...." Later, during the affair, the President was to tell Monica that he remembered that moment vividly. "I knew that one day I would kiss you," he said to her as they sat in his office.
And so on.
The book, authored by Princess Diana biographer Andrew Morton, will be available for download as a RocketEdition at barnesandnoble.com for the same price as the hardback.
St. Martin's Press vice president Steve Cohen said Monica's Story was chosen as the first book to be published simultaneously on both dead trees and live bits because of "the timeliness, the momentum. She has an important story to tell."
Nuvomedia CEO Martin Eberhard added, "This has been a story that everyone's followed on the Net. Now you can take Monica's words and read them wherever you want to."
Cohen doesn't expect the e-book sales to put a dent in the sales on paper. "There are incremental sales. They'll hit people who wouldn't necessarily rush out to buy the book."
If you're planning to purchase Monica's Story online, buying the RocketEdition is the quickest route to gratification -- though it still won't be instant. Barnesandnoble.com takes from five minutes to three hours to process each credit-card transaction, which is of no consequence for print-book sales, but requires e-book customers to wait that long for an URL directing them to the download page, which arrives via e-mail.
Rocket eBooks are handheld devices that display text on high-resolution backlit screens. They're part of a handful of similar devices that have hit the market in the last few months.
Another e-book reader currently available is the Softbook. E-books give readers the amenities of electronic publishing such as lightweight storage (an e-book weighs about as much as a single hardback, and can store 10 books), downloading from the Web, and text search. E-book files are encrypted to prevent duplication.
Electronic versions of Monica's Story and other titles compatible with the Softbook and with the PalmPilot are expected in the next few weeks. The conversion from the publisher's files to the RocketEdition was done by R. R. Donnelley, the largest publisher in North America. The book is being published in an initial print run of 400,000.
