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

[doctorow]

It is just me or do you also agree that Sony's Connect online store looks far from being complete? Perhaps they've already given up and HarperCollins now jumps in to save the day.

[CommanderROR]

I don't think they've given up...but I do believe Sony is getting hit hard for some reason or other...maybe their "agreements" with publishers were not to the publisher's liking?

Oh...I just got an idea...

maybe...just maybe...HarperCollins found out that there are several eink devices out there and that they won't be able to reach Hanlin and Iliad customers with BBeB books...and probably all Connect-Store books will be in BBeB format only....what do you think?

Also...maybe they don't agree with Sony#s pricing model...but that would be too cool to hope for really.

[BasilC]

If they just use NewsStand, that presumably means that we won't be able to read the books on Palm or PPC handhelds... I don't want to have to use a second device just for books or to have to read them on my laptop.

[TadW]

I admit I am confused. How can HarperCollins pick NewsStand as an exclusive vendor if they had previous agreements with Sony? That's all very confusing and not very encouraging (I for one wanted to buy the Sony Reader).

[CommanderROR]

I think the press-release said something about "multiple file formats" or something...so maybe it#s not so bad for palm users.

[Gameboy70]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

I think the press-release said something about "multiple file formats" or something...so maybe it#s not so bad for palm users.

By multiple formats they're probably referring to the publishers' digital prepress files, like PDF or Quark. NewsStand's reader runs off the user's hard drive via Java 1.3, and provides an exact reproduction of the publication -- so "USA Today" on your computer would look like the print version rather than the website. It would definitely work on an Origami device, but probably not Palms or PPCs.

The Sony Reader is an untested market, but PCs are ubiquitous, and NewsStand has a proven track record with major newpapers and magazines. It might be a good idea to distribute through Connect, but an exclusive deal would be too risky at this stage. I think Sony pushed back the release date of the Reader to hustle more distribution contracts from recalcitrant publishers who are waiting to see how the product fares commercially before tying the fate to it.

This is probably bad news. I contacted Newsstand customer support some weeks ago, asking whether they planned on distributing their content via Ereaders like the Iliad.

I want a NY Times or Washington Post-subsidised Iliad reader (mostly for the newspaper content, believe it or not), and the NY Times seems to have tied itself to Newsstand as its electronic-content distributor...

My message:

curious if newsstand.com or its partner newspapers will be offering
the Iliad Ebook reader at any point soon. I've used newsstand service
on a laptop before (and didn't find it comparable to reading the
newspaper in print form). But I was thinking of giving it another go
when an e-ink based reader becomes available.

The reply was as follows:

Thank you for contacting NewsStand's Customer Support. Although the NewsStand product is continually updating, we do not use and do not have plans to use e-ink.

-------
If they are an exclusive distributor for Harper-Collins, and have no plans to use E-Ink...well, you do the math.

[ultim8fury]

So, the most viable display technology to come along in recent years is being brushed aside by publishers. Sounds dumb.