News

John Wiley & Sons Ltd Expands Online Ordering and
Information Capabilities Through BookEasy

Frankfurt, Germany - October 6, 1998 -- John Wiley & Sons Ltd, the largest European operation of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. based in the United Kingdom, and BookEasy, the Internet self-service inquiry and ordering service for the book trade, a subsidiary of VISTA Computer Services, announced today an agreement to launch a Wiley/BookEasy Web site this winter.

"By launching a Wiley/BookEasy Web site, we will be offering a single point of reference for booksellers to obtain information about our titles, place orders, and determine the status of existing orders 24 hours a day, seven days a week," said Bob Long, Wiley's Sales and Marketing Director. The ease and convenience of BookEasy's service goes beyond what else is offered on the Web for the book trade."

The site will establish a virtual link to Wiley's distribution centre, providing booksellers with title, price, and availability information for the approximately 12,000 titles that Wiley sells. Booksellers will also be able to place orders and check on the status of existing orders through Wiley's BookEasy site. Wiley develops, publishes, and sells products in print and electronic media for the educational, professional, scientific, technical, medical, and consumer markets worldwide, and ranks as one of the world's top three scientific, technical, and medical publishers. The company's areas of specialization include the sciences, engineering, technology, mathematics, accounting, business management, and general interest titles.

"Wiley was an early pioneer in leveraging the Web as a business tool, and we are extremely pleased that they are including BookEasy in their Web initiatives," said Peter F. Clifton, Chief Executive Officer of BookEasy. "The company is known throughout the world as a prestigious broad-based publisher with particular strength in the fields of scientific, technical and medical publishing. The addition of Wiley's title list brings a breadth and mix to BookEasy that increases the service's usefulness to booksellers in the UK and globally."

Wiley joins Macmillan Distribution, Exel Logistics, Marston Book Services, and Bookpoint on the BookEasy network in the UK, with TBS (Random House, Little Brown, Virago, etc.), Littlehampton Book Services, and HarperCollins, due to go live shortly. In the US, participating publishers include Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Services (Henry Holt, Farrar Straus & Giroux, St. Martin's Press, and Tor, among others), Broadman & Holman, the trade publishing subsidiary of Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, and National Book Network, the second largest book distributor in the US.

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.

Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is an independent, global publishing company specializing in professional and consumer books and subscription services, textbooks, and educational materials for colleges and universities, as well as scientific and technical books and journals. Wiley has publishing, marketing, and distribution centers located in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Wiley's Internet site can be accessed at www.wiley.com.