Many Directions
At issue in the e-book world is the direction digitized books are likely to take given the intense competition among software companies to develop reading software for e-book content and among hardware companies to create easy-to-use handheld reading devices. In higher education, many e-book enthusiasts have awaited the emergence of e-textbooks, but publishing companies have been slow to bring them to market given the arduous task of securing copyright protections. 
"I think the e-books need to do well in higher education in order for them to succeed as a market," says Marilyn Jenkins, president and CEO of CyberRead, an e-bookstore and publisher services company near Seattle.
Despite presenting a challenging market for technology companies, colleges and universities occupy fertile testing ground for e-book innovations.
Given the newness and the fragmentation of the e-book market, technology companies are proceeding cautiously on the higher education book and textbook fronts. "Faculty are trying to determine to what extent they'll be using e-books in the classrooms," says Tom Prehn, group manager for e-book business development at Adobe Systems Inc.
For its part, Adobe, a leading publishing software company, has launched eBook U, a partnership between Adobe and a group of 9 schools to explore e-books in the classroom. Prehn says Adobe wants to help faculty members securely create and customize textbooks based on their texts as well as chapters from other published works. The partnership will enable students and faculty to use copyright-protected course materials developed as e-books. The e-books will be based on the graphically rich Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF).
"(The partnership) is a small research project," Prehn says.