Mollman says the judges also saw little evidence of valuable technological innovation in the books submitted to the IeBAF this year. Few, if any, capitalized on the medium's ability to support hypertext links and graphics. He says the judges were all "disappointed. We believe that publishers -- all publishers -- should take advantage of the technology and have their e-books be more than just straight print-to-screen extensions. We recognized that this year, everything was new, so we stuck with literary quality."

There does seem to have been some confusion as to exactly what the IeBAF's mission is. Rose attributes the bafflement and annoyance on both sides to "a complication in what they [the IeBAF] expected and what they said they were going to do. What I wondered was, did the best original e-book mean the best-quality fiction? Or did it mean the best quality plus marketing plus innovation? Nobody made that clear." It certainly threw Phil Rance, managing director of Online Originals (England's first and only e-publisher to date), for a loop. Online Originals submitted 12 titles, "picking the books that we thought were the best quality of our work to demonstrate our range, and show that we were publishing a variety of different works."

Mollman acknowledges the lack of clarity in the IeBAF's intentions. "This was an inaugural year for the awards, and this issue is one of the things we need to correct for 2001."

For Online Originals author Patricia le Roy -- one of the more successful e-novelists, whose debut "The Angels of Russia" received a positive review from London's Times Literary Supplement and was subsequently published by Piatkus Books in the U.K. -- the IeBAF's selection of judges didn't hamper her enthusiasm, at least not at first. Before the finalists were announced, le Roy believed that the Frankfurt awards "had the potential to become as important as the Pulitzer or the Booker." But afterward, le Roy was "scandalized to see a shortlist drawn up with such a frightening lack of imagination and cynical absence of responsibility. This prize is supposed to 'extend the reach of reading'? To whom? A few benighted souls in cyberspace who might not have heard of Ed McBain?"

The quality of the finalists also didn't strike Rance as particularly distinctive. "They appeared to me to be B-list experiments from the major publishing houses (predominantly Simon & Schuster, which published four out of the 12 finalists)." Rance suspects that "the prize is on the side of defending the status quo, which is hardly surprising, as the main sponsors will want to align themselves with the major incumbent publishers."

Hard Shell's Wolf sees it that way, too, and thinks "those titles aren't original e-books. Those are print books that were brought out in electronic form quickly, to make them eligible for the award." In one instance, McBain's eligibility as a finalist for "best fiction work originally published in e-book form" was called into question because the Simon & Schuster Web site listed the hardcover publication date for McBain's "The Last Dance" as four months earlier than that of the e-book edition. But as Steve Zeitchik reported last week in the Industry Standard, Simon & Schuster's Adam Rothberg declares that "the Web listing was a mistake." Nevertheless, if the IeBAF doesn't amend its rules, or include e-book industry members next year, Wolf vows, she will not "enter our books for the award."

Philip Harris, founder of the literary Electron Press, publisher of Village Voice Washington correspondent James Ridgeway and political journalist and print author Danny Schechter, says he was suspicious about the IeBAF from the start, and decided not to submit any titles. "It's a promotional thing, and your chances of winning are very slight. I would rather concentrate on getting more books out." Doug Clegg, an Independent e-Book Awards judge whose fiction has been both published in print by mainstream publishers Tor and Dell and self-published in e-format, can understand why Harris and other e-publishers are wary. "It'll just be a nice kudos for a major publisher that might be using e-books as a publicity and promotions exercise. I don't want to see e-books become the ads for the paperback editions the way hardcovers sometimes become the ads for subsequent paperbacks." Clegg predicts that "based on the nominations, these awards will have no impact on e-publishing."

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"