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From its inception, BookTech West has been designed for attendees by industry experts, editors and inventive coordinators. This year, Conference Coordinator Rebecca Churilla invites participants to e-mail questions to her prior to the show to be included in "On the Cutting Edge" sessions listed below. According to Churilla, "BookTech West is founded on the ideal that one-to-one communication is a good business practice. That's why I'm inviting curious professionals to send their questions to me even before the show begins." Churilla explains that by opening up dialogue before the show begins, she'll compile and present the inquiries to each speaker to consider. "If the

By Donna Loyle Some of the country's largest book publishing companies recently unveiled major new electronic-book initiatives, bringing renewed energy into the e-book arena. Time Warner's iPublish.com at Time Warner Books, New York City, scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2001, will offer fiction and non-fiction content created specifically for the Internet, according to company officials. Meanwhile, Random House and Simon & Schuster, along with Microsoft, gave away copies of Michael Crichton's new novel Timeline, as well as some "Star Trek" series novels, all downloadable onto Microsoft's new e-book Reader software. In June, CBS News and Simon & Schuster, both owned by Viacom, co-published an exclusive