Ebooks Worm Their Way into the Reference Market.

This article looks at the state of the online reference electronic book (ebook) market in 2005 and why it has a growing appeal to users, publishers and authors. Vendors agree that one of the reasons ebooks failed in their initial iteration was that the early vendors did not add any value to the electronic versions of books. Without any additional value, there was little innovation for consumers to buy the ebooks when the paper book worked perfectly line. Sean Devine, managing director of the Safari Books Online reference book service, says he compares his company more to an online database information like Factiva than to the original idea of an ebook. Devine says Safari typically acts as a content aggregator for publishers, which build electronic distribution rights into the standard contract so authors are compensated for electronic use of the book. CJ Rayhill, the CIO for O'Reilly Media who runs a new self-service publishing of Safari called SafariU, reports that authors have no complaints about this service. So far, these companies have only begun to touch upon making content portable, and all are at least exploring the possibility of making content available on handheld devices at some point in the future. INSETS: safari u Build Your Own Ebooks;Ebooks by the Numbers.