News

Somerset, NJ, November 19, 1999 . . . PubEasy.com, the global Internet inquiry and ordering service, announced today plans to develop a new service designed to allow small publishers, distributors and wholesalers (Affiliates) from anywhere in the world to participate on PubEasy.com through a new "hub" website. The new site will be linked to all other PubEasy.com Affiliate websites that participate in the PubEasy.com community. The new site will be called /EXCHANGE.

/EXCHANGE will provide participating small Affiliates with standardized messaging, file transfer formats and other technologies to enable pooling of title, price and availability information as well to accept and process orders through the /EXCHANGE site. Booksellers with a PubEasy.com password will have centralized access to the site for inquiry and ordering services.

/EXCHANGE will be open to small Affiliates regardless of their geography and will reflect global participation. /EXCHANGE will also enable small publisher and distributor Affiliates to interface with the new payment reconciliation service, BATCH.CO.UK which is being jointly developed with the Booksellers Association in the UK.

/EXCHANGE will be a fully branded PubEasy.com website reflecting the same standards of user interface and functionality which have now been supported and endorsed by the industry. Small publishers and distributors are watching as larger companies expand rapidly into the world of e-business and consolidate their trading on the PubEasy.com community. As e-business rapidly reshapes business-to-business trading across the global supply chain, all companies need solutions to participate, regardless of size.

"/EXCHANGE is a service concept we have been working on for some time now," said Peter F. Clifton, Chief Executive Officer of PubEasy.com. "PubEasy.com has achieved significant progress in developing its e-commerce infrastructure. Our mission is to build a fully deployed vertical e-business portal in the publishing industry and this is rapidly being adopted and supported. Over the past year, we have listened to different segments of the marketplace and specifically, small companies from all over the world have asked us to deploy a solution so that they could participate on PubEasy.com. These companies are seeking an outsourced, 24 X 7 hosted solution that will also tie them into the PubEasy.com network of websites and exposure to the rapidly growing PubEasy.com bookseller User base. We intend for /EXCHANGE to deliver this service. Our position is such that we are not restricted by geography or language and can therefore support this end of the market effectively."

PubEasy.com, the Internet inquiry and ordering service represents the new standard in e-commerce for the global bookselling industry. More than 1,650 booksellers from over 60 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.

Macmillan Distribution Ltd., Marston Book Services, Exel Logistics, Bookpoint (Hodder Headline), TBS/Grantham Book Services and J. Whitaker & Sons provided early support and endorsement of PubEasy.com. Participation from the bookselling industry continues to grow, with recent Affiliate sites launched by John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Gardners Books, Penguin UK, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. and Littlehampton Book Services. Airlift Book Company is scheduled to launch a PubEasy.com website in  the coming months.

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.

Current "live" PubEasy.com website address

Bookpoint                                 http://pubeasy.books.bookpoint.co.uk
Exel Logistics                         http://pubeasy.books.exel-media.co.uk
Gardners Books                 http://pubeasy.books.gardners.com
HarperCollins Ltd.                 http://pubeasy.books.harpercollins.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons Ltd.        http://pubeasy.books.wiley.co.uk
Littlehampton Books Services http://pubeasy.books.lbsltd.co.uk
Macmillan Distribution        http://pubeasy.books.macmillan-mdl.co.uk
Marston Book Services        http://pubeasy.books.marston.co.uk
Penguin UK                         http://pubeasy.books.penguin.co.uk
TBS/GBS Book Services        http://pubeasy.books.tbs-ltd.co.uk
Whitaker                                 http://whitaker.pubeasy.com

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