INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL BOOK PUBLISHING INC.
Contact me, Don Kafrissen, President for details. E-mail, Call, Fax, Snail Mail, Carrier Pigeons and personal visits welcomed. Let's do lunch! Would you rather freeze your butts off in New York or bask in the sun in Florida? If you have the desire, vision and capabilities to help launch this project, what are you waiting for? Letter of Confidentiality required.
Gutenberg may have been the father of printing, but that was before a few minor developments, like electricity, batteries, and computers. Now there's a whole new way to print and read books -- digitally. And thanks to International Digital Book Publishing, you can be at the forefront of this technological wave.
DIGITAL BOOKS, or DB's for short are small cards about 1/2 the size of a credit card. But don't let the size fool you, because embedded in each card, is the text of an entire book. War & Peace? No problem. The Firm? Piece of cake. Initially, we'll offer about 200 titles including romances, westerns, mysteries, classics, action/adventure, business, and general fiction. Them we'll introduce about 20 new titles a month.
So how do you "read" these DIGITAL BOOKS? With our DIGITAL POWER READER, of course! This pocket-sized viewer comes with a large LCD screen and is easy to use. It has only 6 buttons, and best of all, is inexpensive. All you do is pop the DB in the slot and you're ready to go. The Power Reader runs on 4 AAA batteries, and operates with the following control buttons: There's your standard ON/OFF button; FORWARD and REVERSE arrow buttons; a button that lets you turn a PAGE or SCROLL like a computer screen; one that increases the TYPE size, and one to BOOKMARK your place. That's it.
"A retiree who has spent a lifetime tinkering with electronics has dreamed up a device to read computerized books."
Got any of those old fashioned books around, the ones printed on paper? You might want to hang onto them. They may become collectors' items. The wave of the future, says Don Kafrissen, is digital - books computerized and compacted down to a plastic card half the size of a credit card: a Bookcard. Slip a Bookcard into the side of Kafrissen's portable book reader and you and your electronic book can go anywhere. The portable Reader measures 7.5" x 4.5" x 3/4" and only weighs 5 to 6 ounces.
There's an unflickering LCD screen - black type on a white background - in a 3" x 6" window. With a row of buttons on the right of the Reader, you can fast forward line by line or screen by screen. You can fast backward. You can mark your place on the bookcard electronically, like turning down the paper page on a printed book. You can even double the size of the type.
"Just as audio tapes replaced records, and then were themselves replaced by the CD, so too then will Digital Books have the same effect on printed books," says Kafrissen's promotional literature.
Kafrissen retired in 1993, sold his Total Tool Repair business in Clearwater and hit the water. He and his wife Diane, ...headed for the Bahamas for a year at sea. Avid readers, the Kafrissen's sacrificed valuable space aboard their 40' sailboat for scores of paperbacks. After a few months in the Caribbean, they discovered the books had begun to mildew.... One night while shmoozing with other live-aboard couples at anchorage, Don Kafrissen noticed a man with an electronic pocket organizer, which used a memory card inserted in one side. "With all the computers and technology, why hadn't there been any improvements in books?" he wondered. Much tinkering went on.
No Manufacturer Yet.
He has several working models and a half-dozen books. He has book publishers, agents and authors looking and talking. He is confident that within months, he will have his portable reader and BookCards on the market. He reasons that today's younger generation, already honed on Game Boys and video arcades, will relate easily to his portable Readers. "Kids find books boring and old fashioned," he says. "But when we show kids our device, its cool." He says he can encode a novel from computer disk onto one of his BookCards in nine seconds. You can put 200 of these in a cigar box.
He estimates he has spent up to $60,000, most of his savings, on research and development. He has no backers, no investors. "If you have a dream, you have to follow it," he explains.
Ideas For The Future. BookCards will be recyclable. Done with one book? Get another imprinted on the same card. In a year or 2, he says, technology will be such that BookCards could have audio as well, like today's books on tape. ...his portable reader could have buttons to give readers a choice of languages. Push Spanish and the text is instantly translated to Spanish. Books aren't the only potential for a portable reader. Paramedics could have a medical reference library at any trauma site. "Don't say we're not going to do it," Kafrissen says. "The technology exists. It will be done." How about vending machines?
Kafrissen's background reflects a restless mind. He's worked at Outward Bound Schools in Canada & Colorado. Now he sails and seeks investors [(800) 862-9149]. ... "If I have to change the reading habits of the entire world, I will." he jokes.
Ben Bova, Science Fiction author: "I'm all in favor of it. ...as the price of paper goes up and the price of computing power comes down, a natural crossover point comes about." He believes Kafrissen's concept is inevitable and when it materializes "electronic publishing will wipe out the distribution system for paperbacks."
Ray Hinst, co-owner of Haslam's Books in St. Petersburg: "I think if electronic technology can find a way to bring the cost of words - can't say "printed" anymore - down, then I think it will be that much better for the rest of us. I'm very enthusiastic, conceptually. The visual word - that's the direction its going. Increasingly, books are limiting their audience."
David Cussen, President of Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Fl.: "It could be a tremendous advantage to the small publisher, don't have to finance inventory, don't have to have a big facility for storage and distribution. We'll be able to keep books in print much longer."
Jonathan Guttenberg, Director of New Media for Bantam, Doubleday, Dell in N.Y.: "The key will be a design that's durable, easy to use and affordable." He says he's seen one of Kafrissen's prototypes
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