"Burlington, N.J.-based Franklin, known for its eBookMan handheld device, said it will disseminate books by authors from Warner Books and Little Brown and Co. Featured authors will include Nicholas Sparks, Brad Meltzer, Anita Shreve and Larry King.

The deal comes five months after AOL Time Warner ended its own short-lived e-book publishing effort dubbed iPublish, citing a weak market for the technology, and moved sale of digital reprints to its book group....

Such moves have had their affect on the fledgling industry, with several companies attempting to offer e-book text and devices going out of business. Last month, Digital Goods, formerly known as Softlock.com, which worked with Simon & Schuster as a distributor for King's Internet-only book "Riding the Bullet," filed for bankruptcy....

Publishing companies also haven't written off the digital format entirely. Earlier this week, Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster said it would release 23 Ernest Hemingway books in an electronic format.

Chris Strano, director of marketing at Franklin, said it is continuing to work with publishers to provide a viable way for them to produce digital works. In addition to AOL Time Warner's book division, Franklin says it has distribution deals with Vivendi Universal, Houghton Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, Columbia University, Collins U.K. and Merriam Webster, among others." [News.com]

The technology still needs to get easier to user, the players have to agree on open standards, and prices have to drop. They'll never get a mass market while the price of an ebook is still equal to that of the print edition. I'm glad Franklin is still moving forward, but there's a wall I don't think they'll get past until some of these things occur.