The Wall Street Journal is
reporting (only to its subscribers, not to us) that HarperCollins Publishers has bought an equity stake in
NewsStand Inc., a distributor of digital editions for newspapers and magazines. NewsStand is also parent company to
LibreDigital, who specialized in online sales and marketing of e-books, from digitization to display.
Furthermore, the article states that HarperCollins is starting to offer competitors to use its digitizing technology for a license.
Other publishers who invested in e-book technologies recently include:
- CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster, who is constructing its own digital warehouse, expecting to have more than 12,000 digital titles by year-end
- Bertelsmann AG's Random House Inc., who is in the ongoing process of creating a digital archive for its backlist and newly published titles in the late 1990s.