Finalists Announced for Frankfurt eBook Awards

The International eBook Award Foundation has announced the finalists for the first Frankfurt eBook Awards. The awards will be presented for the first time during the Frankfurt Book Fair, with the award ceremony being televised live at http://www.iebaf.org/ Friday, 20 October 2000. The Grand Prize winning author for the best ebook of the year will receive $100,000.

In what seems likely to continue for such a major set of awards, most nominees have come from established (New York-based), publishing houses, rather than the smaller, independent epublishers. Naturally some of the epublishers who have helped grow the ebook industry to where it is today would be disappointed; others take it as a sign that the ebook industry as a whole has a good future.

Some dissatisfaction was expressed among epublishers months ago when the submission criteria required a publisher to have published 20 or more books from different authors over the year -- a feat beyond many smaller, newer epublishers. The number was later changed to 10 or more books. Of the 11 ebooks nominated, two came from epublishers -- Denlinger's Publishers and 00h00.com. The rest of the ebooks came from established traditional publishers, including Simon & Schuster, Doubleday and Random House.

The finalists are as follows:

For Best Fiction work originally published in eBook form:

Ed McBain, The Last Dance (Simon & Schuster)
Colleen McCullough, Morgan's Run (Simon & Schuster)
E.M. Schorb, Paradise Square (Denlinger's Publishers Ltd.)

For Best Non-fiction work originally published in eBook form:

Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It In the World (Simon & Schuster)
Larry Colton, Counting Coup (iPublish.com/Time-Warner Books)
David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered (Simon & Schuster)

eBook Converted from Print Categories:

Best Fiction work originally published in print and converted to eBook form:
Myla Goldberg, Bee Season (Doubleday)
Michel Houellebecq, Extension du domaine de la Lutte (00h00.com, France)
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (Random House)

Best Non-fiction work originally published in print and converted to eBook form:

Peter Gay, Mozart (Penguin Putnam)
Vilim Vasata, Überleben in der Sintflut (Econ Verlag, Germany); English title is Radical Brand

Sponsors of the award include Glassbook, Microsoft, Nuvomedia, Softbook, Contentville, Reciprocal and Overdrive.

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