Simon & Schuster Selling e-Chapters
-- Publishers Weekly, 11/2/2009 8:46:00 AM
Simon & Schuster has started to sell individual e-chapters to its bestselling You series of titles written by Dr. Michael F. Roizen and Dr. Mehmet C. Oz. The initiative was developed as part of a broader effort by Dr. Oz to provide answers about health on his the "Ask Dr. Oz" section of his Web site. For answers to questions that appear in one of the You titles, S&S created an e-commerce widget that will allow consumers to purchase just the chapter in which the answer was found as well as providing the opportunity to buy the complete book in digital, physical, and audio formats.
Prices for the chapters will range from $2 to $3 based on the number of chapters and list price for the complete book. The chapters will come with DRM protection. Currently, the e-chapters are available for sale only through the askdoctoroz.com site, which is part of a new venture, Sharecare Inc., put together by Oz and Jeff Arnold, a WebMD founder and Discovery Communications's chief of global digital strategy. S&S spokesperson Adam Rothberg said being part of Sharecare puts the e-chapters in a "robust marketplace," making the material part of a platform that contains a variety of health-related information. S&S is willing to offer digital material on health or other subjects to other specialized sites, according to Ellie Hirschhorn, executive v-p and chief digital officer for S&S. S&S is also willing to offer the new e-commerce capability to other publishers and authors. In addition to the You books from S&S, chapters from the first book, You: The Owner's Manual, published by HarperCollins, will be available for sale through askdoctoroz.
