Digital literature firm eBooks Corporation has signed a major five-year distribution deal with Nokia Finland.
Estimated to be worth in the millions of dollars, the deal means eBooks will supply a range of book excerpts for download onto the new generation of Nokia smartphones.
Users access and purchase eBooks products through the Internet by clicking an icon on the web-enabled phones.
The Claremont-based company is also working to establish ebooks.Mobile, an online mobile portal to be accessible from any web-enabled handset.
The deal is a major development for the firm, which comes as several major players move away from electronic books. In recent times, US book giant Barnes and Noble dropped its electronic book divisions.
Despite the deal with Nokia Finland, eBooks founder and managing director Stephen Cole was conservative in his outlook.
“It’s difficult to assess how big this is,” he said. “For the moment our expectations are modest.
“We estimate there will be 30 million phones with eBooks on them by the end of next year.”
Mr Cole said eBooks approached Nokia in March this year and concluded the deal in October.
“The business model is a revenue share model where Nokia takes a commission on sales,” he said.
Mr Cole said Nokia found the concept appealing as the electronics giant was looking for new functionality for its smartphones.
“For Nokia, their desire is to make their phones as functional as possible,” Mr Cole said. “We approached Nokia and it went straight to one of their directors.
“It was good timing for them because they are investing heavily in functionality and were looking for a content partner.”
In a statement, Nokia’s manager rich media business group, Petri Hokkanen, said the deal was an “interesting development” for the mobile phone giant.
“The mobile device is a logical platform for people to carry and manage all their reading needs,” he said. “Screen display and storage capacity have come a long way in recent years. At the same time, the available inventory of eBooks has exploded.
“eBooks Corporation’s years of experience in producing and distributing eBooks will be of great value.”
Meanwhile, eBooks has developed new business streams that target wholesale and academic literature markets, with a plan to take such books online
EBL, an eBook library service, allows students and academics to borrow library books online, either by downloading entire texts or specific segments.
The system was developed in conjunction with Curtin University of Technology, Yale University, and North Carolina State University in the US, and nuclear research organisation CERN in Geneva.
With EBL, eBooks acted as a distributor of content for the library, which was designed to maximise revenues for publisers and allow greater access to high demand texts for students and scholars.
The system is currently being trialled at 21 universities across the world.
eBooks has also entered into distribution agreements with two of the world’s largest academic books distributors – Dawson Books in the UK and Blackwell Books Services in the US.
“This is tremendously important because they are both large distributors of books into academic libraries in their respective markets,” Mr Cole said.
The company has shelved its eBookEngine venture, an electronic wholesale distribution system, for the time being to focus on the Nokia deal and other current projects.
