Harper Collins (part of News Corp), which has recently made the right noises about digitizing and selling its books catalog online, has invested in the Austin-based electronic editions company NewsStand. As part of the deal, Harper will work with LibreDigital, a division of NewsStand, to “create, market and operate digital services for the publishing industry.”
Late in 2005, Harper announced its own digital book strategy (independent from initiatives from the likes of Google and Yahoo), and was expecting to digitize about 20K books every year...it has done about 10,000 till now. Presumable the decision to invest in the company was to help in speed up the digitization and distribution process.
Also, the two companies will launch the technology they have developed jointly as a service to be used by other book companies as well. More details in the release here.
New York Times was/is a major investor in NewsStand, a company which has been having some trouble of the last few years, and did a recap round last year.
Related:
-- Harper Collins Throws Its Hat In Digitizing Book Cauldron
-- HarperCollins Adds More Digital Content; Hopes To Increase Sales With Samples
-- NewsStand Recapitalizes; Gets $5.6 Million Funding