SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - With the development of electronic books, or e-books, still stymied by numerous roadblocks, a number of Internet companies are now starting to take a similar but different route. These firms are building digital collections of books, or e-libraries. But rather than offering fiction and other general works that users pay to download and read on pricey e-book devices, e-libraries are primarily collecting academic texts that readers can search and view via the Web on any PC. And, instead of aiming at the general book-buying public, e-libraries are aiming at the 15 million college students who are cramming for tests or researching term papers. College students are ``very attractive to us because of the photocopying and research they do,'' said Christopher Warnock, chief executive of ebrary, one of half-a-dozen firms vying in this arena. The players range from the Internet arms of long-established education publishers like Encyclopedia Britannica to well-funded startups that are slowly convincing publishers to overcome their fears about piracy and cannibalizing their print revenues in order to reach this budding market. ``Digital publishing in the education industry will become a major force in five years,'' said Yegin Chen, an analyst with Eduventures.com, a Boston-based market research firm. Eduventures.com estimates that the current market for e-library services already totals about $250 million per year. It predicts that will more than triple by 2004 to more than $850 million per year. 'NOT WHAT YOU WANT TO CURL UP IN BED WITH' That contrasts with what analysts say is the better-publicized -- but less-promising -- market for e-books. Sales of e-books are expected to generate just $70 million in revenue this year, according to market research firm Jupiter Media Metrix -- a tiny drop in the estimated overall $70 billion book publishing market. For one thing, reading an e-book generally requires the use of an expensive reading device -- really a computer with a large, flat-screen -- that costs between $300 and $800. And the experience of squinting at a hefty e-book reader can also be off-putting. An e-book ``is really not what you want to curl up in bed with,'' said MJ Rose, an author and columnist for online news site Wired.com who writes about Internet publishing. Sales of e-book readers have been meager so far by most reports. Jupiter estimates only 1.9 million devices will be sold by 2004. EBRARY ADOPTS PHOTOCOPYING MODEL E-libraries attempt to sidestep many of the problems associated with e-books. Take ebrary, which will allow users to freely read on-screen any page from any of the ``tens of thousands'' of books stored in its archive. The Mountain View, Calif., startup hopes to profit by charging users small fees -- 15 cents to print a page, 25 cents to cut-and-paste it into a word processor -- that will be split between ebrary and the book publishers themselves. It's a model that Warnock compares to the photocopying of books, which he estimates was worth $4 billion in the United States alone last year. Ebrary is ameliorating piracy fears by using proprietary security and encryption software to protect the books from being printed or downloaded. At the same time, all of ebrary's content will be searchable via mainstream search engines like Google or Alta Vista, Warnock said, making it easily reached by students.
