Somerset, NJ , August 2, 1999 . . . Penguin
Books (UK) and PubEasy.com, the global Internet inquiry and ordering service, today
launched the Penguin PubEasy.com web site at http://pubeasy.books.penguin.co.uk.
Access is free to all Penguin bookselling customers and Penguin titles will now be linked
from the Whitaker PubEasy.com web site.
Penguin’s PubEasy.com web site now provides booksellers around the world with
access to title, price availability, order status checking and order placement over the
Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days-a-week. Booksellers will also be able to access
virtual catalogs of featured titles and link to Penguin’s marketing web site for
enriched title descriptions and book jackets.
The full range of Penguin imprints, including: Allen Lane, Hamish Hamilton, Michael
Joseph, Penguin, Penguin Classics, Penguin Reference, Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics,
Rough Guides (in which Penguin is a majority share holder), Viking and children’s
imprints Puffin, Ladybird and Frederick Warne, will be available on their PubEasy.com
site.
With the addition of Penguin, who was elected the UK 1998 Publisher of the Year,
PubEasy.com now provides online access to the major trade publishers including:
HarperCollins, Random House, Little, Brown and others, via the PubEasy.com network.
"Improved service to our customers is one of the key drivers to Penguin’s
success now and in the future and PubEasy.com is a superb example both of a practical and
innovative use of e-commerce," remarked Andrew Welham, Penguin’s Group Sales and
Marketing Director.
"We are extremely pleased to have Penguin’s support, " said Peter
F. Clifton, Chief Executive Officer of PubEasy.com. "The addition of the wide
range of trade titles and imprints that comprise the Penguin list will be welcomed by the
many booksellers who are choosing to do business over the Internet through PubEasy.com.
The number of registered users continues to grow and will accelerate as other
companies, including Gardners and Wiley, launch PubEasy.com sites in the coming
months."
PubEasy.com is fast becoming the new standard in e-commerce for the bookselling
industry. More than 1,300 booksellers in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia are using
the service for daily updates on title, price and availability to place orders and to
check the status of their orders. Booksellers can directly access any participating
Affiliate site in the network or the Whitaker UK bibliographic database via PubEasy.com.
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 Whitaker provided early support and endorsement
of PubEasy.com. Participation from the industry continues to grow, with recent Affiliate
sites launched by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., Littlehampton Book Services and Penguin.
Gardners Books, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., and Airlift Book Company are also scheduled to
launch PubEasy.com sites.
US Affiliate sites scheduled to launch include: Broadman & Holman, Von Holtzbrinck
Publishing Services (Henry Holt, St. Martin's Press and Farrar Straus & Giroux),
National Book Network (the second largest US book distributor) and the LPC Group
Distributors.
