News

White Plains, NY, October 10, 2000 . . . PubEasy, The Global Publishing e-Marketplace and Chronicle Books LLC, the San Francisco based book publisher announced today that Chronicle Books Publishing has joined PubEasy and plan to launch a PubEasy web site with a target launch date of January 2001.

Chronicle Books specializes in high-quality illustrated books including, The Beatles Anthology, and other popculture titles, as well as award winning books on food, gardening, fine art, design, photography and style. Chronicle Books also has a successful children’s book list, which includes Olive, the other Reindeer, and a gift division which publishes a well respected and extensive selection of notecards, journals and calendars.

The PubEasy registered bookseller community is growing fast with over 3,000 bookseller accounts and 4,500 users from 95+countries. Booksellers in the US and around the world, with a PubEasy password, will be able to access the entire Chronicle Books title database and inventory/fulfillment system for real-time price and availability information, order placement, order tracking and access to e-Catalogs. The Chronicle Books/PubEasy site will offer the new PubEasy services including the /TRANSACT™ service, which enables booksellers from anywhere in the world to "batch" price and availability inquiries, order status inquiries and orders across the Internet for rapid processing and acknowledgement. It will also offer carrier and shipper links, personal pricing and market restriction information as well as the ability for booksellers to create and modify their own e-Catalogs on the Chronicle/PubEasy site.

Tom Fernald, Executive Director of Operations and Finance of Chronicle Books said, "We are excited to offer expanded and flexible ordering and inventory status checking services to our customers over the Internet. The Chronicle Books/PubEasy site will enable our customers to communicate and place orders with us at all times of the day and night, which as a San Francisco based publisher is an important service for us to provide—particularly to our East Coast customers. With the continued growth in sales of our own books and in the sales of our distributed publishers’ books, we felt this was a critical strategy to undertake and the right time to get on board given PubEasy’s growing presence in the marketplace."

"Chronicle Books adds an exciting dimension to PubEasy in the US. The Chronicle list is prestigious and sought after by a wide range of book-resellers. Chronicle accounts will benefit greatly by the transactional access provided by PubEasy and Chronicle," said Peter F. Clifton, Chief Executive Officer of PubEasy