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SharedBook Celebrates Major Milestones: Doubles Customer Base to 45 Leading Content Brands, Signs With Largest Christian Publisher Thomas Nelson, Increases Book Sales 70%
Tuesday 05. May 2009 - Company Shows Accelerated Momentum as Book Publishing Transforms and Consumer Demand Continues to Shift Towards Personalized and Customized Content
New Products and Technology Enhancements Announced
SharedBook Inc., the Custom Publishing Platform provider, today celebrates its five year anniversary with significant momentum in all metrics including business performance, customer growth with leading publishing brands, and the recent unveiling of multiple new product and technology enhancements across its portfolio of customized and personalized book offerings.
“In this economic environment, content owners are laser-focused on ways to drive new revenue streams, reduce costs, and speed time to market. In parallel, consumer spending is shifting away from commodity products to more lasting and meaningful, value-added offerings,” said Caroline Vanderlip, Chief Executive Officer of SharedBook. “SharedBook is at the heart of this transformation as we create new business models that help change the economics of the publishing business. We’ve created a technology platform that changes the entire model of how a book gets created, published and delivered to customers, while addressing the shifting consumer demand for more personalized and on-demand content.”
In the past year the company has doubled its customer base to now serve more than 45 leading content brands and publishers. In business performance, SharedBook experienced 60 percent year-over-year revenue growth in 2008. Its book unit volumes have increased a whopping 70 percent and order volume is up by 56 percent. Other business milestones include:
— Today the company announces its first affiliate program for both its
Blog2Print platform and its book personalization web site,
Inscribe-it.com (more information on both is below). Through this
exclusive program, web sites can link to these SharedBook platforms
and earn revenue from purchases. Initial affiliates include
FirstBook.org, grandparents.com, ClassBrain.com, kidmondo.com, and
scrappingsimply.com.
— The latest two agreements include a partnership with Thomas Nelson,
the largest Christian publisher in the country, to deliver
personalized books with expansion into customized product offerings.
Learn2Grow, a leading online gardening community resource, will be
launching with SharedBook to enable gardening aficionados to create
their own customized gardening books.
— In April, SharedBook unveiled its patented annotation technology
platform with Our Energy Policy Foundation, a new online initiative
for the nation’s energy policy leaders. Using SharedBook’s contextual
annotation Our Energy Policy Foundation aims to enhance the
development of U.S. energy policy through discussion by experts in the
field from industry, academia, non-profit organizations, government,
and elsewhere.
— In March, SharedBook launched its newly enhanced book personalization
Web site, Inscribe-it.com, to offer books with customized
inscriptions, special messages and even photographs, with advanced
features to personalize books for all occasions.
— In February, SharedBook launched its Smart Button technology, with
implementations with longtime partner Legacy.com and new partners
Encyclopaedia Britannica and SOHO Publishing. Smart Button is a
streamlined implementation of the SharedBook platform that allows
partners to apply SharedBook’s customized creation capabilities with
minimal resource application and maximum flexibility, delivering new
revenue sources.
— Recently, SharedBook expanded its Blog2Print platform for anyone who
has ever wished to have a permanent copy of a favorite blog. With the
Blog2Print platform, users of all three major consumer services,
Google’s Blogger, WordPress and Six Apart’s TypePad, are now able to
create well-formatted books of their blogs.
“SharedBook is demonstrating significant company growth and success as we celebrate our fifth anniversary. We are capitalizing on the economic environment by enabling content owners to capture new revenue without substantial additional investment. This is an exciting time to be part of the fast-changing publishing marketplace and to be helping both traditional publishers and content library owners embrace new business models in the digital era,” added Caroline Vanderlip.