Over the past two years blogging about the media industry, one of my favorite kinds of stories has been about promising startups with disruptive business models.
One of those is the ebook publisher and distributor Smashwords, headquartered in Los Gatos, CA. Today, the company announced that it has negotiated a distribution agreement with Apple.
"The iPad is a true second generation e-reading device, which I believe will
introduce millions of new readers to the joys of ebooks," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords.
The deal will provide a new distribution channel for the authors of many of Smashwords line of 10,000 original ebooks from over 4,000 authors and 150 small independent publishers.
The company says it now publishes over 1,000 new ebooks every month, including many by authors who were previously published by large publishers.
Sales of ebooks are exploding and they are by far the fastest growing segment of the book publishing industry in 2010. Smashwords has been aggressively expanding its partnerships with distributors over the past year and now adds Apple to an impressive list: Barnes & Noble, Sony, Amazon, Stanza, Kobo, Aldiko, FBReader and Word-Player.
These cover all the major, spanning all major mobile platforms including Android, Blackberry and iPhone.
-30-
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment