Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Toni Weiskopf

http://publishersweekly.com/article/CA6444825.html (for the complete article)

by Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 5/21/2007 copyright 2007 Publisher's Weekly


The latest entrant in the growing ranks of companies offering book content via mobile devices is DailyLit, a new company formed by husband and wife Albert Wenger and Susan Danziger. Unlike other startups, such as Mobifusion and Moka, which aim to get information to consumers' cellphones, DailyLit is using e-mail and RSS feeds to deliver book installments that can be read in less than five minutes.

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Under the DailyLit model, the company will e-mail book installments of about 1,000 words to a customer's device of choice, be it a PDA, Blackberry or other player. Pricing is still being worked out, but Danziger said she would like to keep the cost of receiving a complete book below $5. Customers can receive a feed at the same time every day and can get additional feeds if they want to read more of the book at a particular time. Consumers who order a book through the DailyLit.com site get two free installments before they are required to pay for the full book.

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Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf said she signed with DailyLit because it's a way to test a new delivery method with little risk. “It's a chance to reach beyond our traditional audience,” Weisskopf explained. Weisskopf said she particularly liked DailyLit's serialization approach since that style has worked well with Baen's own WebScription service, which offers subscribers installments of Baen titles as e-books before they are released as print editions. Baen has given 10 books to DailyLit to start, and, noted Weiskopf, “there's plenty more if it works.”

Ed here: Toni Weiskopf is one of the finest editors in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. She worked for years with the much-missed Jim Baen who pioneered various ways of using the internet to sell books and even offer readers full-length novels to download free. Toni Weiskopf is obviously continuing the Baen tradition, trying new ways to reach new readers. Publishing needs a lot more people like her if it's to succeed in the era of the internet.

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