We believe that it is important for publishers to be innovative in providing digital options for consumers to access our content.
We're offering a concrete business model with which we can go forward with vendor partners to allow readers access to the contents of our books in way that satisfies readers' interest in sampling and discovery.
planting a flag, trying to establish some ground rules that we are comfortable with to create this new kind of commerce around book content.
We'll not participate on the basis of some small, incremental charge, ... We think digital text has real value and we're not interested in making it just an adjunct to the print product.
There has been a lot of tension among publishers about technology. But if you ask me if I'd rather have someone watching television or someone surfing the Internet, I'd prefer the Internet because it requires some form of reading.
We've been talking to multiple vendors, and evidently, our conversations with Amazon yielded some fruit, ... because they announced their own initiative on the heels of our announcement. We can now hope or expect them to be our fist vendor.