S. Kritikos on Fri, 3 Sep 1999 23:51:44 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> Fatbrain To Introduce Online Model To Sell Text




Hi

Comments welcome on the following, an effort to set up a commercially
viable system to sell short texts. On the one hand we are all accustomed
to getting free papers online, on the other the realities of academic life
and funding being what they are any possibility for independence from
institutions is in my view welcome. 

sk


Tuesday August 31 12:54 AM ET 
Fatbrain To Introduce Online Model To Sell Text
By Andrea Orr

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - When you say ``online bookstore,''
Fatbrain.com is not the name that most people think of. 

But Fatbrain will introduce Tuesday a new technology for selling books,
magazine articles and other documents over the Internet that it says will
do more to change the publishing world than any service offered by
Amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com. It says its new service could do for
publishing what the MP3 technology has done for the music industry. 

Fatbrain, which to date has focused selling business and professional
books, has developed a new system, called eMatter, that allows book and
magazine publishers as well as individuals to sell digitized documents
online, and earn royalties on every copy sold. 

The company says the service will provide a new way to exchange
unpublished material, including documents like company research papers
that have never been economical to print. It says authors may use the
service to sell their work directly to the reader, while magazine
publishers may use it to resell articles that have been printed in past
editions. 

``This is going to be one of those things like MP3 and eBay where you
can't predict what will happen,'' said Fatbrain Chief Executive Chris
MacAskill. 

``There has never been an economic channel for the 10-to-100 page
document. Authors have had to write for newspapers or magazines, or write
a book. What if you want to write something that's 20 pages and sell it?
There's never been a model for this.''

eMatter incorporates more secure technologies than most existing systems
for selling documents online, Fatbrain says. The author can set his own
price, provide a summary of the material and then place the work into one
of thousands of subject categories on the Fatbrain Web site. 

They will receive 50-percent royalties for each sale of the work posted.
To initially promote the new service, Fatbrain will offer 100 percent
royalties on material sold on eMatter between October 18 and January 1. 

MacAskill said the material sold might include notes from conference
proceedings, newsletters, corporate white letters, training manuals or
analyst reports on stocks. 

``I think it will change the world of publishing,'' he said.  ''It will
empower a whole range of authors to go straight to the people.''




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