On September 5, four of the nation's largest trade book publishers announced they had reached an agreement with Yahoo! to sell e-books through the Yahoo! Shopping Internet site, while Barnes & Noble Digital announced that it will launch its new digital book group on September 11 with an original e-book from bestselling author Dean Koontz.
Under its agreement with Random House, Penguin Putnam, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, Yahoo! will sell a wide variety of e-books for both the Microsoft Reader and Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader through its site (http://shopping. yahoo.com/books/ebooks); the software can be downloaded for free from the site.
The site launched last week with 1,000 titles and will add new ones on a regular basis, said Rob Solomon, v-p and general manager of Yahoo! Shopping, although he declined to give any specific targets. "We wanted to reach critical mass and we feel we've accomplished that through our agreement" with the four publishers, Solomon said, adding that Yahoo! will likely sign up additional publishers before the end of the year.
Solomon said the launch of the e-book site was part of Yahoo!'s strategy of selling different types of digital media. "We want to learn what our customers want. This is definitely a time of experimentation," Solomon told PW. He speculated that science fiction and business e-books would be popular, as would guidebooks. Each listing includes a link to buy other versions of the e-book, including print and audio editions. "We see this as a way to increase sales through all channels," Solomon said.
Neither Solomon nor the publishers went into the details of the deal. Simon & Schuster president Jack Romanos said the financial arrangement was "like buying a boutique space on Yahoo!," while Penguin Putnam v-p and corporate director for business affairs John Schline said the agreement could be thought of as "e-co-op."
Both Romanos and Schline said a major attraction of the arrangement, which was initiated by Yahoo!, was the number of consumers the portal attracts. "This is a huge opportunity for us," Romanos said. "Yahoo! is the largest purchasing option on the Web from our perspective." Schline said Penguin was "looking for a business model that makes sense. Yahoo! brings a lot of consumers to one site." He added that the new site "does a good job of consumer education on how to download an e-book. It makes it easy."
Another attraction of the deal for Romanos is that, as the seller of record, publishers will get the names of e-book buyers. "It's an attractive dynamic to know who's buying your books," Romanos said.
Neither said the agreement with Yahoo! was an end run around established e-retailers such as barnesandnoble.com, but both emphasized that their companies are searching for new ways to bring products to consumers. "It's clear there are no hard and fast rules in electronic publishing," Romanos said. "Everyone is trying to do new things. No one is sure what their role will be in the future, so you need to learn as much as you can," Schline said.
Koontz Due This Week
While the publishers are exploring new selling avenues, new e-publisher Barnes & Noble is gearing up for the launch this week of its digital book group. Initially announced in January, the B&N digital book group has two imprints: B&N Digital, which will focus on digital reprints of previously published titles, and World Digital Library, which will debut in October and specialize in public domain and out-of print classic titles in e-book editions.
Michael Curro, B&N director of merchandising for e-books, told PW that B&N Digital will be "like a mass market imprint, in addition to publishing a handful of original titles." World Digital Library titles, said Curro, will feature new introductions by scholars and academics and will be available as e-books and print-on-demand paper editions. B&ND will publish @ titles a month. Books will be priced at $7.95, $5.95 and $4.95. Koontz's The Book of Counted Sorrows will kick off the B&ND launch.
Curro said B&ND titles will be offered in all e-book formats and in a variety of genres. "We'll be open and let the market determine what's best." He said the e-book list will feature "brand-name authors and new writers. We'll have review copies and marketing and publicity; we intend to be a mature publishing imprint." Curro dismissed recent reports suggesting that e-books have failed. "A lot of that is about inflated expectations," he said. "We want to bring lower prices, and there aren't enough reading devices. E-books have not been tested in the market. We're confident that a market will be there. We're investing and doing more; we're not scaling back."
