News

New Internet functionality allows booksellers to place batch inquiries and orders to Affiliated publishers, distributors and wholesalers in the US and UK.

Somerset, NJ, June 15, 1999 . . . PubEasy.com™, the Internet Inquiry and Ordering service, today announced plans to introduce a new point-to-point, batch inquiry and order processing module called /TRANSACT™. Scheduled for release this fall to PubEasy.com Affiliated publishers, distributors and wholesalers worldwide, /TRANSACT is a secure Internet-based tool that will initially handle inquiries and orders and in a second phase, more complex business transactions.

Booksellers ordering through PubEasy.com currently select individual titles one at a time, building an order through the shopping cart or fast track order entry Web pages. With /TRANSACT, a bookseller will compile an unlimited number of line items together in a secure file and submit it across the Internet directly to the PubEasy.com Affiliate of their choice for processing and acknowledgment.

"The volume and value of orders placed directly to PubEasy.com Affiliates have skyrocketed over the past four months," said Peter F. Clifton, Chief Executive Officer of PubEasy.com. "At the same time, booksellers tell us that they want to inquire and place orders directly to Affiliates via a ‘batch’ inquiry and order processing feature. This is exactly what /TRANSACT provides. The ease-of-use, simplicity and global reach of /TRANSACT are features that are unique in the industry. Any bookseller with a PubEasy.com password will be able to compile orders into a simple file format, they can even export them from their Point of Sale systems and then transfer them directly to a PubEasy.com Affiliate over the Internet through /TRANSACT."

/TRANSACT will also prove invaluable to publishers and distributors who currently receive multiple title inquiries and/or orders faxed, emailed or mailed to them by major customers including chain booksellers, wholesalers, bookstores or others. These inquiries and orders often require days of research and re-keying into computer systems for processing and fulfillment. /TRANSACT provides for a simple, time saving and cost effective solution to getting these directly into operational systems and provide acknowledgements by way of the Internet. /TRANSACT will also integrate with the comprehensive invoice and payment service for booksellers, BATCH.co.uk, which is being developed in the United Kingdom.

PubEasy.com is fast becoming the new standard in e-commerce for the bookselling industry, facilitating the supply chain by providing information whenever it is needed. More than 1,100 booksellers in the North America, the UK, Europe 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 the PubEasy.com Global Service page. 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 (Random House) 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. and Littlehampton Book Services. Gardners Books, John Wiley & Sons Ltd. and Penguin UK are scheduled to launch PubEasy.com sites shortly.

The service recently added its first US Affiliate, Broadman & Holman. Other US Affiliate sites scheduled to launch include: 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.

To access PubEasy.com, booksellers need a computer, 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
PubEasy.com/TRANSACT™is a service mark of VISTA Computer Services
PubEasy.com is a subsidiary of VISTA Computer Services.

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