MightyWords in Distribution Pacts
-- Publishers Weekly, 4/16/2001
MightyWords has teamed up with Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon.com to have the two e-retailers offer the company's eMatter content through their sites.
The more extensive agreement is with BN.com under which BN.com has established a new Articles for Download store on its site. All 3,500 items in MightyWord's catalogue can be downloaded from the BN.com site and printed out by customers. In its deal with Amazon, more than 230 eMatter items are available through the site's e-Books section.
BN.com and Amazon are the first major outlets to become part of MightyWords' Mighty Network, which the company envisions as comprising a wide range of sites that will make the company's content available directly to consumers. "This is the beginning of a big push for us," Judy Kirkpatrick, executive v-p and general manager of MightyWords told PW.
In addition to adding more distribution partners, Kirkpatrick said she expects to expand the company's catalogue to 20,000 items by the end of June. Since MightyWords has decided to focus on collecting professional and technical works, she said, the company is aggressively looking to add material at a rapid clip. While most of MightyWords' offerings will be original material that runs 10 to 100 pages, some content will be articles from technical and business magazines that MightyWords "will add value to," Kirkpatrick said.
BN.com holds a 53% stake in MightyWords and has been selling some of its digital texts since last fall. Kirkpatrick said MightyWords will continue to publish original books, particularly in the technical and business areas. —Jim Milliot
