Frankfurt eBook Awards discontinued after funding dries up

By Planet eBook Editor
April 19, 2002

After two years the International eBook Award Foundation (IeBAF) has announced the Frankfurt eBook Awards over. The most lucrative and prominent eBook awards have been discontinued with organizers citing its inability to raise the appropriate funding necessary to continue with the awards, which included a monetary component of more than $100,000.

According to reports the major financial supporter of the foundation Microsoft could not continue to extend its eBook-related budget to the foundation. "Microsoft told us that their budget did not foresee funding for the foundation," said Alberto Vitale, Chairman of the International eBook Award Foundation on Wednesday.

"It has become increasingly difficult to raise the necessary funding to continue the worldwide work of the International eBook Award Foundation. We are very gratified to know that the contributions of the IeBAF over the past two years had a powerful and positive role in developing the awareness and importance of eBook publishing in the United States and around the world," said Alberto Vitale, Chairman of the International eBook Award Foundation. "We remain confident that, over time, the eBook will emerge as an enormously successful medium for publishers and authors, and a commendable source for readers."

The announcement is bound to generate mixed feelings in the eBook world because of the fact that some independent publishers and authors shunned the awards, regarding them as little more than a marketing exercise for the companies funding it and the large publishers who were encouraged to enter their eBooks.

"I remember how the original announcement set very poorly among the independent e-publishers, especially when the lack of small e-publishers in the "movement" became obvious. We [GLB Publishers] pointedly did not participate; many other independents stayed far away, and it seemed that the judging results last year bore out our predictions: the IeBAF was based on Microsoft and the big New York publishers with their high sale prices and high publisher discounts to the exclusion of independents who were actually responsible for establishing and promoting the field," said Bill Warner of GLB Publishers. "Right or wrong, I take the dissolution (failure?) of the Foundation as more evidence that the future of e-publishing rests largely with the independents who favor low sale prices and high author royalties."

Yet there were also many supporters who welcomed the scope of lucrative awards and the prominence they gave not only to the nominees but to the eBook industry as a whole.

"One of the awards' goals was to bring international attention to the possibilities of electronic books, to raise their profile," said Jamie Engle, eBook Connections editor. "In this, it did remarkably well and I'm sorry to see the Foundation closing. Hopefully it will be re-established when eBooks are more in the main stream."

Perhaps a new award will spring up straight away to replace it, or perhaps the Frankfurt eBook Awards will quickly fade away. Or perhaps one of the longer running award organizations, like the EPPIES or Independent eBook Awards, will take up the mantle and create an award that tries to bring together independent and big publishers to reward the best and promote the whole industry.

Time will soon tell.