Books, cellphones to connect

NEW YORK — Cellphones aren't just getting smart. They're turning into bookworms.

From their humble start as a simple phone that you could carry in your pocket, mobile phones have added a raft of features, such as the ability to take photos, shoot video, receive and send e-mail, and search the Internet.

Now, cellphones are adding another feature: the capability of displaying electronic versions of books.

With their small screens, cellphones might not spring to mind as a suitable medium for reading lengthy stretches of text. And a much ballyhooed e-book revolution during the dot-com era in the late 1990s and early 2000s fizzled, leading many in publishing to doubt whether books would ever escape the bounds of paper.

Deal making

But that hasn't stopped such publishers as Houghton Mifflin, Simon and Schuster and Avalon Travel from making deals with specialty firms to produce mobile versions of some of their titles.

In one of the most recent deals, Boston-based Houghton Mifflin, which traces its origins back to 1832, agreed to work with Mobifusion, a Silicon Valley firm, to make some of the publisher's reference and children's books available in mobile versions.

One of the first titles that they hope to have out by the end of the year is "Fast Food My Way" by celebrity chef Jacques Pepin. The cellphone version will probably cost $30 — the same as the print version.

"You could be at Dean and Deluca in New York and look up the recipe for what you're going to make for dinner that night," said Houghton Mifflin's David Langevin, referring to the gourmet food store. "So with your phone, you know what to shop for. That seems a lot more functional than the print book."

Harpercollins UK recently announced a deal with Apple to make excerpts of the publisher's books available free on Apple's iPhone in Britain. In addition, the phone will carry author interviews and audio clips of writers reading from their work.

Part of the reasoning behind such deals is that mobile versions of popular titles may help sell more printed books.

When you get home from the gourmet store with your chanterelle mushrooms and heirloom tomatoes, would you rather read one of Pepin's recipes from a cellphone screen or from a large printed page, with a big color photo to show how the dish should look?

But another reason speaks to the uncertainty of the Internet age: Nobody knows for sure what format of electronic reading will prove to be the ultimate winner, or whether there will be an ultimate winner.

So why not hedge your bets and try cellphone books as well as more conventional electronic books intended for bigger screens?

"We're really aiming to be agnostic and ubiquitous," said Claire Israel, director of digital content at Simon and Schuster, which is planning to make some consumer reference material, such as buying guides, available on cellphones, possibly by the end of the year.

"In terms of format, we're just trying to push this content out there. I'm very comfortable with letting the consumer make the choice."

Andrea Chambers, director of New York University's Center for Publishing, noted that using mobile phones as portable reading devices is already well-established in Asia, especially in Japan, where commuters use their phones to read graphic novels and novellas.

Rise of e-books

After years in the doldrums, sales of electronic books have begun to rise quickly, reaching $2.3 million in August, about triple the sales for one month three years ago. Cellphone book sales are not broken out separately.

E-book advocates note that one advantage of electronic books over their printed counterparts is the potential for adding features to make the content more useful, or more quickly accessible.

Bill Newlin, publisher of Avalon Travel, said his company is working on a cellphone version of its popular Rick Steves European travel guides, starting with a combined guide to Paris and London. That will save travelers from having to pack bulky guide books.

Down the line, he said, the electronic guides will be able to tap the cellphone's ability to pinpoint its location, so that users will be able to get a quick list of all the guide's recommended hotels within a certain distance.

Short escapes

The bigger challenge is finding a way to make cellphone versions of novels and compelling nonfiction books acceptable to readers. Cellphone screens may be fine for looking up the right kind of red wine to serve with dinner, but so far they haven't proved suitable for what publishers call an "immersive reading experience," when readers lose themselves in a story.

But Harlequin, the Toronto-based romance publisher, has a service called "Harlequin on the Go" on the Sprint network, which will send subscribers serialized versions of their books in 500-word chunks every day for $2.49 a month.

"Most people are completely unaware of what their phone can do," said Harlequin digital and Internet director Brent Lewis, who declined to say how many customers the service had. "We very much believe that mobile is the way of the future."

Given the often fractured nature of people's free time, Simon and Schuster's Israel sees cellphone books as potentially giving people a chance to escape into a story whenever they have 10 or 15 minutes to spare, whether they're sitting in a doctor's office or waiting to pick their kids up from soccer practice.

"I don't think anyone expects anyone to read 'War and Peace' on their cellphone," she said. "But it should be available if they want to."