CDC Partners with Tizra to Make Clients' Books Available As Online PDFs  

by Craig Morgan Teicher -- Publishers Weekly, 6/26/2008 7:32:00 AM

Yesterday, Chicago Distribution Center (CDC), the distribution arm of the University of Chicago Press that is a one of the major distributors of scholarly and university press books, announced a partnership with online content packager Tizra to enable CDC’s client publishers to sell online versions of their books via subscription. The University of Chicago Press itself will be the first CDC publisher to make its books available in Tizra’s Agile PDF format later this summer. 

Tizra, a Providence, RI-based company, is the creator of the Agile PDF, essentially a Web-hosted e-book format. Tizra turns publishers’ PDF books into tagged, completely searchable Web pages hosted by Tizra. The Agile PDF format includes customized Web sites for publishers and books and various means of marketing and selling the content. Other Tizra clients (but who are not part of the CDC agreement) include Duke University Press and MIT Press. 

CDC Publishers that choose to utilize Agile PDF must also participate in CDC’s Bibliovault, which is the distributor’s digital content warehouse. Karen Barch, COO of CDC, said conversations are underway with other CDC publishers, and although no other deals have been signed she hopes to have other publishers’ books available as Agile PDFs later this summer.