HarperCollins slaps Sony in the face with own e-book plans

[Alexander Turcic]

Publishing giant HarperCollins may feel the heat over Google's plans to digitize a large body of literature for future online access. As a consequence, the publisher announced last week that it anticipates completing the digitization of more than 10,000 book titles by the end of June 2006. To succeed in this mammoth project, they picked NewsStand as their exclusive vendor and developer of a global "digital warehouse." NewsStand is also known as a distributor of digital daily newspapers and magazine in more than 120 countries.

"NewsStand's existing platform for digitization, hosting and distribution of leading newspapers and magazines around the world makes them a natural partner to get this project up and running quickly," said Jane Friedman, President and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide. "We look forward to working with them to digitize our books and build our digital warehouse."

"We are excited to partner with HarperCollins Publishers to help transform how knowledge is stored, distributed and consumed in the future. Digital warehousing on this scale-- with this flexibility-- is a significant leap forward in the information industry," commented Kit Webster, NewsStand's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Our company's experience in managing digital information including content rights control, electronic publication enabled websites and Internet distribution has made this large project possible, both in terms of processing and timelines. The NewsStand team is dedicated to enabling HarperCollins to become a first mover in digital technology applications."

Clearly this enterprise cannot be in the interest of Sony. HarperCollins has previously agreed to sell digital e-books via Sony's Connect online store, and it remains to be seen how that fits into the publisher's latest plans to pick NewsStand as the exclusive distributor of forthcoming e-book content. One thing's for sure, though: The market for e-books is heating up!

Related: CEO of a top 10 book publisher writes about e-books