Scholastic Expands Epublishing Initiative

Posted on March 8, 2002

Scholastic Inc., the children's publishing and media company, announced this week the release of nineteen new ebook titles from the company's varied bestselling series including Dear America, Royal Diaries, Remnants and Scholastic Question & Answer aimed at children ages eight and above. Scholastic's new assortment of ebooks represent historical fiction, science fiction, nonfiction reference, and significantly expand the company's epublishing offerings to include a variety of genres for the emerging tween and teen ebook market.

K.A. Applegate of Animorphs fame, and Karen Hesse, 1998 Newbery Award-winner are among Scholastic's authors whose work will be available in the ebook format. Beginning this week, the new ebooks will be available for purchase at retail and etailing outlets, with a suggested retail price of $1.00 below the printed versions, all of which are currently available in stores.

"We are approaching e-book publishing as a component of our branding strategy," said Barbara Marcus, President Scholastic's Children's Book Publishing and Distribution Group. "As we expand Scholastic's e-book library we select titles in series and are currently leveraging ebooks as an innovative way to market, promote and drive print sales. Although mass market is years away, kids in the teen and tween age-groups will likely be adopters of this format. We also believe that teachers will be interested in the ebook for classroom use as the formats and readers become more appealing."

Scholastic launched its epublishing initiative with Hate Hurts, a book about discrimination, in the spring of 2000. That was followed with an ebook marketing and promotions campaign for the launch of K.A. Applegate's new series entitled, Remnants, where ebook installments of #01: The Mayflower Project were made available prior to the printed book.

In October of 2001, Scholastic then developed an enhanced ebook version of the company's Dear America series, releasing A Time for Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen, by Kathryn Lasky, in ebook form. The ebook was offered free for six weeks and is currently available for purchase at the suggested retail price of $9.95. The enhanced ebook edition features additional content, which provides contextual and historical background information, images, and audio. The print book will be published in March 2002, in celebration of Women's History Month.

Most recently, the company launched an exclusive promotion with Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc. and the Interactive Program Guide services (IPG) for its new imprint for teens entitled PUSH, where two of the debut novels Pure Sunshine and Kerosene were made available as e-exclusives in the Gemstar ebook format from late December 2001 through February 15th.