Press is experiencing similar
results: 'For each of our electronic books, we've approximately doubled our
sales. The plain fact is that no one is going to sit there and read a whole book
on-line. And it costs money and time to download it'."

Some sites maintain a directory of publishers, for example, Publishing Companies
Online and Publishers' Catalogues.

Publishing Companies Online is the WWW Virtual Library list of publishing
companies, classified in the following categories: academic publishers; computer
book publishers; scientific, technical, medical (STM) publishers; electronic
publishing companies; on-line publishing projects; and other commercial
publishers.

Maintained by Peter Scott of Northern Lights Internet Solutions Ltd. in
Saskatoon (Saskatchewan, Canada), Publishers' Catalogues has a very practical
geographical index.

4.2. Do Authors Still Need Publishers?

The Internet has considerably reinforced the relations between the authors and
their readers. In fact, do authors still need publishers? Thanks to the Web, a
writer can now post his work, sell it or discuss with his/her readers without
any intermediary.

Murray Suid is a free-lance writer of books (How to be President of the U.S.A.,
Moviemaking Illustrated, etc.), multimedia products (Oval Office, The Writing
Trek), and screenplays (Now, Moving to Mars). He is also vice president of
Monday Morning Books, an educational publishing company located in Palo Alto,
California. He replied to my questions in his e-mail of September 7, 1998:

ML: "How do you see the relationship between the print media and the Internet?"

MS: "For one thing, the Internet serves other print media. [...] My recently
published book, The Kids' How to Do (Almost) Everything Guide, would probably
not have been done prior to the invention of e-mail because it would have cost
too much in money/time to locate the experts. So the Internet is a powerful
research tool for writers of books, articles, etc.

Also, in a time of great change, many 'facts' don't stay factual for long. In
other words, many books go quickly out of date. But if a book can be web
extended (living partly in cyberspace), then an author can easily update and
correct it, whereas otherwise the author would have to wait a long time for the
next edition, if indeed a next edition ever came out.

Also, in terms of marketing, the Web seems crucial, especially for small
publishers that can't afford to place ad