Reed Press Inks Deal With Sourcebooks

Reed Press, the new imprint established by Reed Business Information, has signed a distribution agreement with Sourcebooks. Reed Press is Sourcebooks' first distribution client; the company will handle all sales, marketing and distribution functions for Reed. Nick Weir-Williams, Reed Press's publishing director, said Sourcebooks' large special sales force and penetration of the library market, in addition to its retail sales force, make it the perfect distributor for Reed. "Reed Press will be an innovative publisher, so we chose a distributor who is innovative and has demonstrated that they can generate excitement in the market," Weir-Williams said.

Reed Press plans to release eight books this fall and 40 in 2004. Its debut list will include The Complete Book of Oscar Fashion: Variety's 75 Years of Glamour on the Red Carpet and Dancing with the Boys: AOL at the Dawn of Internet Retailing. Part of Reed Press's list will be drawn from RBI's trade magazines, which include Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Furniture Today. "As a publishing company, we have unique marketing advantages because of our magazines and our connections to the various markets we are publishing into," said Fred Ciporen, president of Reed Press. "Our intimacy with these markets gives us an essential insight into their demands, and we will be publishing into those demands."

Among the initiatives planned by Reed are the launch of a graphic novel imprint, Reed Graphica, and a Spanish-language imprint. Reed Press will be exhibiting at BookExpo America at the Sourcebooks booth.