Encyclopaedia Britannica, Rosen Publishing Team to Form New Publishing Initiative

By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 5/12/2009 9:05:00 AM

Encyclopaedia Britannica has teamed with the newly formed Rosen Educational Services to launch Britannica Educational Publishing. The new initiative will develop and distribute curriculum-correlated material as well as individual titles and e-books for the K-12 school and library market. The first list of 80 titles is scheduled to be released in 2010 for grades 7-12 in the areas of science, social studies, history and current events. BEP expects to publish 100 titles in 2011, and Rosen Publishing Group president Roger Rosen said at some point BEP would move into the middle grade. Print and digital titles will be released simultaneously.

Roger Rosen said Rosen Educational Services was created specifically to handle all publishing and distribution functions for BEP to the educational market. Rosen is building a sales and editorial team to work with EB to shape Britannica’s content into book format. Front- and back-matter and sidebars are some of the features that will be added to EB’s core content. Roger Rosen said that while he is certainly aware of the difficult economic conditions, he believes there is a need for these materials. “We’ve seen cycles before and we know education will come back and we’ll have our materials ready. We are encouraged by the commitments the new administration has made to education.”