Franklin Cuts Deals For More Ebookman Content

Posted on June 28, 2001

In a series of seperate announcements, Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc. , a provider of handheld ebook reading devices, announced several new content agreements with publishers and content providers. The agreements include deals with The Wall Street Journal, Alexandria Digital Literature, St. Martin's Press, Reciprocal Inc. and Mobipocket.com. Franklin produces the Franklin eBookMan, a device which allows people to read books, listen to music and audio books and organize their day. Franklin is trying to expand the content available for use with this device.

Franklin's recent content deals include:

• Highlights from The Wall Street Journal Online will be available to users of the Franklin eBookMan. This content, which is optimized for mobile devices, will consist of top news summaries of the day plus selected news features, and initially will be available to all purchasers of the eBookMan at no additional charge.

• Electronic book publisher Alexandria Digital Literature, Inc. (AlexLit) announced that Showtime Networks Original Pictures premieres the television adaptation of Bruce Holland Rogers' story, "Lifeboat on a Burning Sea" June 29, at 8 p.m. Renamed The Other Side, it's part of Showtime's trilogy On The Edge. AlexLit, a privately held company, is the exclusive ebook publisher for Rogers' story. The Company has partnered with Franklin Electronic Publishers, in a promotion for the eBookMan reader. The two companies recently entered into an agreement under which AlexLit will use Franklin's Content Developers' Kit for eBookMan to convert their full library of over 700 ebooks into Franklin's tagged format for reading on eBookMan. Franklin will provide free downloads of Lifeboat to eBookMan users at PC Expo in New York, June 26 to 28. eBookMan users can download the title for free from Franklin's website through July 1. This promotion coincides with Showtime's premiere of The Other Side.

• Franklin Electronic Publishers and St. Martin's Press, are working together to make St. Martin's library of electronic content available for the Franklin's eBookMan. Robert Ludlum is one of the bestselling authors on St. Martin's roster that eBookMan users will have access to. Ludlum published his first thriller in 1971 and has since written 21 bestsellers including The Hades Factor, The Prometheus Deception and The Cassandra Compact. All of Ludlum's novels are still in print.

• Reciprocal, Inc., a provider of digital content distribution services, will also have a strategic relationship that is targeted to expand the availability of electronic books and other digital content for Franklin's eBookMan. Reciprocal will integrate Franklin's DRM technologies with the Reciprocal Digital Clearing Service and other Reciprocal digital distribution tools, ultimately enabling eBookMan users to download electronic content in a variety of formats, from a variety of sources.

• Franklin Electronic Publishers. and MobiPocket.com S.A. of Paris, France, a company partially financed by Viventures Partners, created by Vivendi Universal, announced an agreement by which the companies will bring electronic books, web-based information services, and office applications to Franklin's eBookMan. A beta version of the MobiPocket Reader, which allows eBookMan users to read electronic books on the go, is now available for download from franklin.com. With MobiPocket Reader for eBookMan, readers have access to more than fifteen hundred electronic books in English, French, German and Spanish from publishers such as Vivendi Universal Publishing (that has recently acquired the US-based publisher Houghton Mifflin) and Taylor and Francis.