Lightning Source and Digital River Join Forces

Posted on January 19, 2001

Lightning Source Inc., a provider of digital content services, and Digital River, Inc., a provider of ecommerce services, announced that they have entered a strategic partnership to offer ecommerce services for the book publishing industry. Under the agreement, Digital River will offer its ecommerce services in tandem with Lightning's digital content fulfillment services. The two companies will jointly sell their services to book publishers and retailers.

``This partnership represents an important collaboration of two leading `enablers' in today's online marketplace,'' said Ed Marino, president and CEO of Lightning Source. ``By leveraging the combined expertise of Lightning and Digital River, book publishers, retailers and others now will have the opportunity to use the best tools available to develop and streamline their electronic distribution channels for digitally fulfilled content such as print-on-demand books and eBooks in one place.''

Through the joint agreement with Lightning Source, Digital River will provide ecommerce services including site design and hosting, transaction management, e-marketing and customer service. Lightning Source has relationships with domestic and international publishers, and recently received commitments from several major publishers to add more than 50,000 titles to its digital library. Some of Digital River's clients include Symantec, Fujitsu, 3M, Siemens, Hewlett-Packard, Novell, Autodesk, Adaptec, Block Financial and Staples.com.