Noted Publishers and Authors Join the eMatter Revolution; Deliver Works in Digital Format at Fatbrain.com
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 18, 1999--
Best-selling Authors and Publishers Join More Than 3,000 Self-Publishers
Noted publishers and authors have joined the eMatter(TM) revolution, submitting digital content for sale at fatbrain.com. To date, more than 3,000 writers have signed up to self-publish eMatter content. The eMatter initiative - from Fatbrain.com(TM) (Nasdaq: FATB), the Internet's most comprehensive bookstore for professionals - is the first-ever secure digital publishing service that allows anyone to publish and sell their works online, earning at least 50 percent royalties on every copy sold.
In an overwhelming response to the program, authors and publishers of books, magazines, newsletters and webzines have posted books, documents and articles available today for the first time in a secure digital form. Original eMatter content available today covers a broad range of professional topics including technology, business, finance, medicine and science, plus a variety of creative subjects such as fiction, poetry, self-help and how-to guides.
Geoffrey Moore, author of the best-selling book, Crossing the Chasm, and chairman of The Chasm Group, has published some of his works as eMatter. Moore said, "Fatbrain.com is creating a new publishing outlet for short to middle length prose, in particular the short story and the personal essay. In prior eras they were the stuff of magazines and pamphlets, the talk of salons, the occupation of afternoons. Today they have got lost amid the all the paperbacks and the emails. It will be good to see them in circulation again."
Publishers
Publishing firms that have committed to provide content for purchase through the eMatter program include the following.
-- CAP Ventures, Inc. - a leading market research firm covering the
digital publishing industry
-- Coriolis Group, LLC - the leading provider of certification
training materials and services
-- Fawcette Technical Publications - a leading publisher of
information tools for computing professionals
-- Hampton Roads Publishing Co. - a publisher of quality
metaphysical fiction and non-fiction
-- Macmillan USA - a leading publisher of computer information
-- Marketing Technology - a highly-acclaimed monthly technology
marketing newsletter
-- McGraw-Hill Professional Books Group - the leading publisher of
business, computing and reference books
-- Nolo.com - a leading provider of self-help legal information
-- O'Reilly & Associates - publisher of market-leading books on
technology
-- Pinnacle Publishing - a publisher of technology newsletters
-- Publish Magazine - the leading monthly magazine for the graphic
communication and enterprise publishing industry
-- RAND Corporation - publisher of articles and reports on public
policy issues
-- Red Herring - the leading technology business magazine
-- Salon.com - a leading Internet media company that produces news
plus a variety of targeted Web sites and online communities
-- The Industry Standard - the newsmagazine of the Internet economy
"I'm excited to have this opportunity to participate in the launch of eMatter," stated Matthew Carter, publisher, XML Magazine at Fawcette Technical Publications. "At Fawcette, our goal is to provide the IT development community with the solutions they need to succeed. As the first XML magazine, it makes sense to launch XML through a cutting-edge service like eMatter."
"This is a great example of Internet synergy - we've got unique material, they've got the right eyeballs," said Howard T. Flint, vice president of business development for Pinnacle Publishing. "Pinnacle Publishing is thrilled with the opportunity to put its trademark high-end content written for software developers in a vehicle such as eMatter from Fatbrain.com."
"Publish Magazine is happy to be participating in this flexible new distribution channel," said Wesley Walton, publisher for Publish Magazine. "We will take advantage of the eMatter program to distribute our specialized graphic communication information to Fatbrain.com's valuable community of technology readers."
"Fatbrain.com offers RAND a means to achieve a key goal of our corporate mission - the dissemination of our research findings to as broad an audience as possible," said Jane Ryan, associate director, publications for RAND Corporation. "We look forward to publishing all our major titles as Fatbrain.com eMatter in the future, and to benefiting from the reduced manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution costs available through digital distribution."
Robert S. Friedman, president of Hampton Roads Publishing, a quality publisher of metaphysical fiction and non-fiction, commented on the eMatter initiative. "We believe that the Internet is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for communication and the spread of ideas. With the advent of innovative companies like Fatbrain.com, we now have the ability to easily access articles and information that previously would have been unavailable to a large percentage of the world. We think it is important to make books available in as many formats as possible. Hampton Roads Publishing is pleased to be among the first to participate in Fatbrain.com's new eMatter program."
Individual Authors
The eMatter initiative allows individual authors to offer their works for sale to an established channel of buyers. Thousands of authors are delivering their work via eMatter today, including the following notable names:
-- Richard Bach - debut of an original short story The Ferret
Chronicles: Book One - Air Ferrets Aloft
-- Alan and Stephen Cohn - The Sage Guides to Mutual Funds
-- Riane Eisler - selected articles from her Center for Partnership
Studies and the debut of her first short story, Scherehazade
-- Catherine Lanigan - best selling author of Romancing the Stone
and Jewel of the Nile makes out-of-print title Admit Desire
available and is set to publish her first original short story as
a Fatbrain.com exclusive, Miracles are Golden, in November
-- Ervin Laszlo - Another Look at China at Fifty explores the
country's checkered past, post-Mao era, and impending
demographic-ecological breakdown, from the founder of the Club of
Budapest
-- David Loye - original works from the author of The Serpent and
the Rainbow
-- Charlie McDowell - C for Java Programmers: a Primer
-- Geoffrey Moore - essays on The Digital WOW Factor and Why
Companies Fail from best selling author of Crossing the Chasm and
The Gorilla Game
-- Lewis Perdue - a tech consultant and magazine writer publishes
Slatewiper, an original techno-thriller
-- Ira Pohl - STL Distilled, a new companion volume to the
authoritative C++ Distilled
-- Dan Poynter - The Self-Publishing Manual and Writing Nonfiction: Turning Thoughts Into Books
-- Andreas Ramos, et al - Breaking Into Technical Writing from the
Silicon Valley technical writers' trade group of the National
Writers Union (NWU)
Said Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing Manual, "eMatter is brilliant. This revolutionary publishing concept is a great service to would-be authors."
Said Alan Cohn and Stephen Cohn, co-presidents of Sage Online and authors of the Sage Guides to Mutual Funds, "eMatter is on the cutting edge of the publishing industry. We were on the groundfloor of the Internet when we formed Sage Online in 1994, and we want to be on the ground floor of the online publishing industry in 1999. eMatter matters!"
"It really works. Just write your material, set your own price, and get royalties that Stephen King can only dream about. This opens up friction-free instant e-publishing for the professional 5,000 writers in the National Writers Union," said Andreas Ramos, chair of the Silicon Valley technical writers' trade group of the National Writers Union (NWU).
"eMatter is a great concept," said Payson Stevens, author and president of the InterNetwork Media, Inc. "It is sorely needed for the countless writers who have been squeezed out of the market because of the consolidation of the book publishing industry. It opens the door for authors to have access to the Internet audience and vice versa. Let ten thousand authors bloom!"
To secure eMatter documents, Fatbrain.com has developed new patent-pending secure digital rights technologies to protect the ownership rights of the document in Windows versions of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). eMatter documents are expected to be available in Macintosh and UNIX versions in early 2000. Downloaded eMatter files have a persistent security wrapper that ensures that content is protected even if it is redistributed; only users who have purchased the eMatter file will be able to read it. If a copy of the eMatter file is opened on a different computer, the new reader is offered the option to purchase the work.
About Fatbrain.com
Fatbrain.com, the Internet's most comprehensive bookstore for professionals, is the first e-commerce provider to deliver secure digital publishing through its eMatter initiative. Recently named the number two fastest-growing public company in Silicon Valley, Fatbrain.com offers a world-class selection of books, training materials and documentation for professionals in business and finance, technology and other industries. Through its corporate intranet bookstore program, Fatbrain.com is accessible from the desktops of more than 1.3 million employees at customer sites. Fatbrain.com offers discounts of up to 40 percent, and all in-stock orders placed by 4 PM PST ship the same business day. Visit Fatbrain.com on the Web at fatbrain.com.
Fatbrain.com and eMatter are trademarks of Fatbrain.com, Inc. All company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
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