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Time Warner adds e-books
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May 23, 2000: 10:51 a.m. ET
Microsoft, Random House, Simon & Schuster also set e-publishing deals
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Time Warner, owner of publishers Little Brown and Warner Books, will form an independent electronic publishing unit, the company said Tuesday.
The new unit, to be called ipublish.com, will maintain its own staff and solicit works independently of Time Warner's other publishing units but also will republish other Time Warner (TWX: Research, Estimates) titles electronically.
 The new unit, disclosed at a news conference Tuesday, will be headed by Greg Voynow of Time Warner Trade Publishing.
Separately, Simon & Schuster, a unit of Viacom (VIA: Research, Estimates), and Bertelsmann's Random House unit announced plans to give away electronic versions of author Michael Crichton's latest thriller, "Timeline," available through barnesandnoble.com
 And software titan Microsoft announced the availability of over a dozen "Star Trek" titles in electronic form, readable only with Microsoft's Reader software on pocket PCs. Users of pocket PC devices from Casio Computer and Hewlett Packard can download the titles free through BN's site.
"The new eBooks are available exclusively on the Pocket PC eBooks section of bn.com, and they reflect bn.com's commitment to being an early provider of eBooks utilizing state-of-the-art technology," said Steve Riggio, vice chairman, barnesandnoble.com.
Awareness of the electronic book, or e-book, movement was spurred in March when best-selling author Stephen King released an electronic-only version of the novella, "Riding the Bullet."
Time Warner also has announced that Microsoft Reader with ClearType display technology will be a reading format for the iRead channel of iPublish.com at Time Warner Books. Time Warner is the parent company of CNNfn. 
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