Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

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Ingram to provide ebooks for Booktopia

Online bookseller Booktopia has signed with Ingram’s CoreSource ebook platform and plans to begin selling ebooks through the platform by the end of the year.

Booktopia CEO Tony Nash told Bookseller+Publisher that Booktopia expects to switch its ebook business from Google to Ingram in the next month. He said customers who have previously purchased ebooks through the Booktopia website will continue to be able to access their purchases through their Booktopia accounts.

Booktopia has been selling ebooks via Google since the end of 2011, however, Google’s ebook reseller program is due to end in January.

‘Booktopia is in discussion with many Australian publishers to ensure their Australian ebooks are available on the Ingram system as soon as possible,’ said Nash. ‘Any publishers not with Ingram Digital are recommended to contact Booktopia as soon as possible to ensure their ebook titles are listed on the Booktopia site.’

Nash said that Booktopia’s head of information technology Steve Traurig and head of technology development Wayne Baskin ‘spent some months analysing the various options and in the end Ingram came up with most appropriate solution for Booktopia’.

As previously reported by Bookseller+Publisher, Booktopia was one of the first local retailers to begin selling ebooks via Google in November 2011, along with Dymocks and later Co-op Bookshop. Google said in April this year, however, that it would be ending its reseller program as it had ‘not gained the traction that we hoped it would with customers or retailers’. While Nash said Booktopia was disappointed about Google’s decision in April, he told Bookseller+Publisher at the time that the company was ‘upbeat and committed to changing [its] ebook supplier’.

A spokeserson for Ingram told Bookseller+Publisher that more than 200 retailers currently use CoreSource, including New Zealand-based online boosktore Fishpond and educational resources provider Teaching Shop, which use CoreSource for ebook fulfillment. The spokesperson said other local retailers including ebooks.com, Koorong and Christian bookseller WORD use CoreSource for digital asset management and distribution.

The spokesperson said approximately 2100 publishers around the world work with CoreSource, including a number of Australian publishers. Among the local publishers that use the platform are Allen & Unwin, Black Inc., Bicycling Australia, CSIRO Publishing, Emereo Publishing, Pan Macmillan, Penguin Australia, Penguin New Zealand, Port Campbell Press, Scribe Publications and Text Publishing. ‘Many other publishers have expressed interest and we are currently in discussions,’ said the spokesperson.

CoreSource was initially launched in 2008, with a new version of the platform launched in mid-2010. Other retailers and suppliers that work with the platform include Amazon, Anobii, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, Books-A-Million, Copia, Baker & Taylor and Bilbary.

 

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Category: Local news