The new Barnes & Noble.com Articles for Download store, at www.bn.com, features eMatter, a term coined by MightyWords that describes mid-length, need-to-have, need-to-know business, computing, health and professional information. All the content offered can be downloaded instantly through MightyWords’ secure digital content server to Windows, Macintosh, Unix (including Linux and Solaris) users, then printed to the customer’s local printer.
We believe the market opportunity for the sale of digital content goes far beyond eBooks, and today we are taking a major step in that direction, said Steve Riggio, vice chairman of Barnes & Noble.com. The Internet is a very good medium for the distribution of information and MightyWords provides us with a world-class platform that enables us to sell mid-range, in-depth content to our vast audience of upscale and educated customers. By the end of this year we expect to have tens of thousands of articles available from MightyWords. This step is also consistent with our strategy to be the Internet’s premier destination for the sale of physical and digital information products.
Chris MacAskill, chief executive officer of MightyWords, said, The new Barnes & Noble.com store is the next step in delivering on our vision for the Mighty Network, bringing downloadable and printable must-have, need-to-know information to anyone with a computer through a network of partners and distributors. With this step, MightyWords and Barnes & Noble.com are making it easy for professionals and leisure readers to obtain and print short, compelling secure digital content that helps them solve a problem or do their jobs better. We are also providing new revenue for the distributors, publishers and copyright owners who have chosen to become part of the Mighty Network.
At the new Barnes & Noble.com store, more than 75 percent of the MightyWords eMatter titles have free previews for download. These previews can be emailed to peers and co-workers as examples of digital content available in the Articles for Download tab. Typical MightyWords eMatter is from 10 to 100 pages in length, and is longer than a magazine article but shorter than a book. Best-selling material is found in the business, technical and computing categories.
In support of today’s announcement, 21 titles from the Harvard Business Review’s OnPoint collection are available. Titles include: Making Your E-Customers Profitable, The Disruptive Threat: When Business as Usual Just Won’t Do, Miraculous Transformations: CEOs’ Lessons on Leading Change and Accelerating Change. Each collection includes three Harvard Business Review OnPoint articles, a one-page overview and a framework for applying the concepts to the readers’ own business challenges. Each OnPoint article includes a one-page synopsis, the article and an annotated bibliography linked to the Harvard Business School Publishing Web site.
