Perseus Books Group and Questia Media; Announce an Agreement to Drive Profits in Electronic Publishing

Business Wire, Oct 18, 2000

Business Editors

FRANKFURT, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 18, 2000

The Perseus Books Group and Questia Media, Inc., announced today at the Frankfurt Book Fair an agreement to distribute over 5,000 titles from Perseus Books Group's rich backlist in the humanities, history, and social science through Questia's online digital research service.

This innovative arrangement suggests that the more immediate payoff from electronic publishing may not be via the much-touted "e-books" but rather through subscriber access to serious nonfiction over the World Wide Web, according to Perseus.

At launch in January 2001, Questia will give undergraduates and researchers direct access to an entire collection of 50,000 digitized books and journals, as well as a suite of writing tools, via the Internet. Powerful keyword searches and hyperlinks guide subscribers to the content they need for academic research.

"It is a pure extension of our core business," said Perseus CEO Jack McKeown. "It's also in keeping with our long-term strategy of integrating e-commerce with the digitization of our publishing assets and processes. Perseus was founded to publish the kind of serious books that succeed in the trade but also dominate the academic and professional environment. Questia's service has the potential to vastly expand the audience for our authors and their works."

Scott Lubeck, Vice President and Director of Technical Initiatives for the Perseus Books Group, said new technology is essential to the company's business plan. "With eight imprints located in four different cities, we have to be on the cutting edge. Our arrangement with Questia follows on the heels of our recent alliance with Xerox Corporation to bring digital print-on-demand into our repertoire. Both efforts are the first of their kind in the industry. We all know that knowledge is power. This is a way of mass-customizing knowledge through the power of the Web."

The nonexclusive agreement was negotiated between Perseus Books Group Vice President Carolyn Savarese and Questia Vice President of Publishing Linda Cunningham. Details were not disclosed.

"Perseus' rich backlist, including books from the Basic Books and Westview imprints, among others, will provide a tremendous addition to our collection," said Troy Williams, Founder and CEO of Questia. "Questia's mission is to revolutionize academic research and we believe this agreement moves us forward toward that goal. We have undertaken the largest digitization project in history, which will create a research service for college students that provides them with access to the full-text of hundreds of thousands of credible books and journals. And in the process, we are providing publishers and authors with a new, incremental stream of revenue in which they are compensated every time someone views a page of one of their books."

The Questia service allows users to search its collection for free, but a subscription fee applies to access the actual texts, as well as to use to the suite of writing tools. This business model creates a new revenue stream for publishers by capturing the money they miss when students repeatedly check out their books. In addition, Questia transforms new, out-of-print and backlist titles into revenue-generating assets by increasing their visibility -- with unlimited potential because no book is ever unavailable.

Perseus Books Group, a subsidiary of Perseus Capital, L.L.C., was founded in 1997. Its member companies include Basic Books, Basic Civitas Books, Counterpoint Press, DaCapo Press, Fisher Books, Perseus Publishing, PublicAffairs, and Westview Press.

Founded in Houston in 1998, Questia Media, Inc. is building the first online service to provide unlimited access to the full text of hundreds of thousands of books and journals, as well as tools to easily use this information. For millions of college students and researchers, the Questia service will enable them to efficiently research and compose papers at any time, from every connected corner of the world. Based in Houston with over 260 employees, Questia is delivering on the true promise of the Internet by providing access to a wealth of human knowledge. Information can be found at www.questia.com.