News

National Book Network, Second Largest US Book Distributor, Joins BookEasy

NBN brings more than 75 independent publishers to the rapidly expanding online self-service system.

Frankfurt, Germany - October 6, 1998 -- National Book Network, the second largest book distributor in the US, representing more than 75 independent publishers, and BookEasyä , the Internet self-service inquiry and ordering service for the book trade, a subsidiary of VISTA Computer Services, announced today that they will launch the National Book Network/BookEasy web site in early 1999.

Since 1986, NBN has provided sales, marketing, order fulfillment, credit and collections services to select independent publishers of mainstream, commercial fiction and non-fiction books and audio tapes. Via the NBN/BookEasy web site, booksellers will gain 24-hour/7 day free access to real-time operational data for title, price and availability inquiries as well as ordering and order status inquiry capabilities for all products offered by the more than 75 NBN publishers, including: Kiplinger Books, Regnery Publishing, M Evans & Co., Harvard Common Press, Chilton Books, Consumer Reports, Entrepreneur Media, Future Medicine, Rowman & Littlefield, Presidio Press, and others.

National Book Network offers over 7,000 active titles spanning all subject areas. Their broadest categories include current affairs and politics, all areas of business, spirituality, new age, alternative health and general health. Although NBN has a large and far-reaching sales force, the NBN BookEasy web site will add yet another manner in which booksellers and others in the bookselling community can access and order titles.

"At NBN, we are constantly working to enhance the services we provide our client publishers. With the launch of our new NBN/BookEasy web site, we feel we are adding yet another invaluable tool to market and sell more books," said Rich Freese, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing for National Book Network.

"In this day of just-in-time inventory," said Miriam Bass, VP of Marketing for National Book Network, "expedience in ordering and obtaining information is more critical than ever before. With our new web site, we are confident that booksellers will be placing smaller orders more quickly and more often, achieving better turns and, therefore, greater profitability."

"The addition of National Book Network to our other US Affiliates offers a fast-growing critical mass of titles with the unprecedented access and e-commerce capabilities that BookEasy offers," said Peter F. Clifton, Chief Executive Officer of BookEasy. "As BookEasy transitions to PubEasy.comä in early 1999, NBN will be poised to take advantage of all the enhanced services that the current BookEasy Version 2.0 functionality offers, including, multi-user access, forthcoming titles order forms, backorder management, and display sequence facility."

National Book Network joins other US BookEasy Affiliates, the Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Services companies (Henry Holt, Farrar Straus & Giroux, St. Martin's Press, and Tor, among others) and Broadman & Holman, trade publishing subsidiary of Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. In the UK, BookEasy partners currently include Macmillan Distribution, Bookpoint, Exel Logistics, Marston Book Services, The Book Service (Random House UK, Little, Brown, and Grantham Book Services), Littlehampton Book Services, HarperCollins UK, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Companies that join BookEasy benefit by offering booksellers Internet customer self-service for title, price, and availability inquiries, as well as order and order status capabilities. A fast-growing number of booksellers in the UK and globally are using BookEasy to obtain daily updates on price and availability, to check the status of the orders and dues, and to place new orders, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, no matter what country or time zone they are in. The central BookEasy home page (www.bookeasy.com) provides links to distributor sites, TeleOrdering, and the Whitaker bibliographic database.

BookEasyä is a subsidiary of VISTA Computer Services, with offices in Somerset, NJ, White Plains, NY and London, England. VISTA Computer Services is the worldwide leader in information systems for the book, reference and journal publishing industry. BookEasyä was designed and developed by VISTA in partnership with Whitaker as UK central site bibliographic and TeleOrdering service providers.