Five-year-old Modern Age Books, an electronic publisher of digital texts on technology and computing, has changed its name to match its latest e-publishing venture, Books24X7, a Web site that allows subscribers access to the full text of a wide range of tech books and -- through a link with barnesandnoble.com -- the ability to purchase the print edition, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (www.books24X7.com).
Modern Age/Books24X7 has been a leader in creating electronic versions of computer manuals and books -- more than 45 million of them sold to date -- selling them as separate CDs bound in with the print editions of popular computer books like Harley Hahn's Internet and Web Yellow Pages (Osborne/McGraw-Hill). The firm's new course makes it part of a growing trend of business-to-business Web subscription services, which Forrester Research anticipates will generate $1 billion a year by 2003.
Chris Pooley, president and CEO of the new Books24X7, said that the company will honor its previous electronic books contracts, Modern Age's V-Books, digital texts downloadable to personal computers. Pooley told PW, "We've looked at our core business -- our relationships with major publishers, our experienced team of engineers and our electronic books business. Books24X7 is our go-forward strategy."
Books24X7 has licensed more than 300 technical books from publishers such as O'Reilly &Associates, Que, Sams and Macmillan. The entire contents of more than 60 of these titles are already online, and 50 titles a month are being translated into HTML format that allows users to search topics across the entire Books24X7 library, using their regular Internet browser. The site began testing in mid-May with 500 users. Individual subscriptions currently cost $399 per year or $39 per month, and free trial subscriptions are available to teams of five or more.
Royalties are paid from a portion of the subscription pool and are "based on the access to the books," explained Pooley. "We calculate the usage of every book every time there's a page view, a chapter download or a book put on the book shelf. We also take into account the book's list price."
Although Books24X7 is now aimed at the computing and technology community, Pooley d sn't discount other uses for Books24X7's powerful search engine. "We migrated our content to the technical area because tech professionals absolutely need this information." But Pooley said the company is also looking to market "a suite of books for the desktop user."
