News

Somerset, NJ, February 15, 2000 . . . American International Distribution Corporation (AIDC), the Vermont-based book distribution company, and PubEasy.com™, the Internet inquiry and ordering service for the book industry, announced today that AIDC will launch a PubEasy.com e-commerce website later this year.

AIDC, which distributes approximately 20,000 titles for nearly two dozen publishers, will soon provide online title searching, ordering and tracking capabilities to their one million bookselling customers such as Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Ingram, as well as university, professional and scientific stores, libraries and colleges through PubEasy.com.

Publishers represented by AIDC include: Blackwell Publishers, the world's largest independently-held book and journal publisher known for their student textbooks, professional periodicals and interactive software; Edward Elgar Publishing, known for their high quality list of monographs, reference works and advanced textbooks by important scholars working in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia; Grove's Dictionaries, who receive world-wide respect for their printed and online access reference works in the areas of music, art, economics, science, politics and history; Institute of Physics Publishing, who serve the science and physics communities covering a wide range of subjects within the discipline of physics; the Society of Biblical Literature, who distribute classical bible literature; and Teachers College Press, who publish books for all aspects of education, from pre-kindergarten to postgraduate, specializing in texts, professional books, videos and other materials.

"As part of our e-business strategy, we identified PubEasy.com as the best way to provide our customers with e-commerce facilities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," said Peter Miller, President AIDC. "We want to make sure that our customers are provided with state-of-the-art systems which are becoming industry standards, enabling our database information to be easily available to all our customers, using a common interface that will have benefits for our clients and AIDC alike. We believe that PubEasy.com has invested in the technology to make this happen and has kept publisher and customer needs as the driving force of their implementations. "

AIDC is looking forward to working with customers interested in using the PubEasy.com site, or with publishers who may be interested in joining the ranks of other AIDC publishers. For additional information or questions contact Marilyn McConnell, CEO (mmcconnell@aidcvt.com).

PubEasy.com, winner of the Xerox sponsored Innovator of the Year British Book Award, is the Internet inquiry and ordering service which represents the new standard in e-commerce for the global bookselling industry. More than 2,000 booksellers from over 90 countries spanning the UK, Europe, North America and Asia are using the service to access title, price and availability information, to place orders, to check the status of their orders and to access catalogs from participating publishers, distributors and wholesalers. Booksellers with a PubEasy.com password can directly access any participating Affiliate website on the network or the Whitaker UK bibliographic site.

The service is free to booksellers and is available via the Internet 24 hours a day, 7-days a week.

US Affiliate websites scheduled to launch include: Broadman & Holman, Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Services (Henry Holt, St. Martin's Press and Farrar Straus & Giroux) and National Book Network (the second largest US book distributor).

To access PubEasy.com, booksellers require a password, a computer with a Web browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer 3.0 or later) and an Internet connection. Login to http://www.pubeasy.com and click the 'Register' button to obtain a user ID and password.

PubEasy.com^TM is a registered trademark of VISTA Computer Services, Inc.

PubEasy.com is a subsidiary of VISTA Computer Services, Inc.