Telecom Italia is presenting its groundbreaking e-book store for all literary and trade books at the Turin International Book Fair, which opens today.
With this new platform, Telecom Italia is positioning itself as an enabler for the distribution of digital content, and as a technology partner for publishing companies, which will have access to applications and services that span the entire production chain for this new market. Telecom Italia's e-book store offers a secure, legal and preferential sales outlet which makes it easier to consult, select, purchase, download and use electronic cultural products not just on personal computers but on the next generation of e-readers.
Franco Bernabè, Telecom Italia's CEO, stated: "The opening of this dedicated e-book store is a major opportunity to work with publishers and build a new business model that is completely different from the models adopted in other countries, as it offers publishing companies the greatest independence in marketing and price setting. Thanks to this venture, Telecom Italia confirms its status as a technology innovation leader by bringing to market solutions and services for publishing that do not attempt to replace publishers. The initiative is an integrated platform for end-to-end process management, from distribution through to e-book payment.”
Telecom Italia’s display area at the Book Fair (Pavilion 2, Stand K22/L25) offers a preview of the potential of this portal, and gives visitors a chance to try out the browsing and purchasing functions on a number of e-book readers converted for a demonstration of the services currently undergoing testing, and enabled for WiFi connection. Models marketed in future will also offer 3G mobile connection.
The new platform will host ePub and PDF format e-books protected by a digital rights management (DRM) system to ensure that publishers have direct control and management of digital rights for their published titles.
E-books may be purchased and viewed on a number of different e-readers or on personal computers using preinstalled software. Alternately, they may be downloaded without extra charge from Telecom Italia's e-book store.
After signing up to the portal, digital library customers can access their personal area and manage the books they have purchased, which may be consulted at any time from the device or from a personal computer. Customers can choose between a number of methods of payment for their e-books, ranging from credit cards to charging a TIM prepaid SIM Card. E-readers marketed for use with the Telecom Italia store will not incur any extra charge for connecting to the portal and downloading digital content over a 3G mobile connection.
Turin, 13 May 2010