iPublishCentral, AAUP Make E-Book Publishing Available to 130 University Presses

New York, NY (Vocus/PRWEB ) June 22, 2009 -- The Association of American University Presses (AAUP), a nonprofit organization of academic publishers is pleased to announce a cooperative agreement with iPublishCentral, a self-service e-content delivery platform from Impelsys, to support its 130 members in pursuing electronic publishing. The partnership provides AAUP members with a discount for using iPublishCentral's e-publishing platform and services through AAUP.

iPublishCentral, a self-service digital content publishing, marketing, warehousing and distribution platform, will allow participating AAUP members to market books on the Internet, sell content online, and promote brands and titles across the Web. Among the three core components of iPublishCentral are market, distribute and deliver.

"Scholars are increasingly looking for content on electronic platforms, and university presses want to serve those readers and writers as best as possible," says Peter Givler, Executive Director, AAUP. "iPublishCentral promises to provide the infrastructure and reduce the costs, time, and risks for university presses to create e-books and content and engage in revenue-generating online book marketing and electronic content distribution," added Brenna McLaughlin, AAUP Electronic and Strategic Initiatives Director. "The association is happy to be able to offer this new cooperative discount program to our members."

In year one of the agreement, AAUP members will benefit from complimentary content hosting services available through iPublishCentral. In subsequent years, members will pay sliding-scale fees based on the number of books they upload to the iPublishCentral site. AAUP will share a small percentage of revenue made from transactions that occur on the AAUP portal using iPublishCentral.

Through iPublishCentral, AAUP members can launch their own publishing portals, creating online content products and bundles. They can also monetize their backlist without the overhead of more traditional online content publishing, lengthy development timeframes or pricey infrastructure.

"iPublishCentral has a proven model that has helped university presses to get their content online. In our agreement with AAUP, we look forward to helping other university presses open new distribution models and discover new ways of realizing revenue,," says Sameer Shariff, CEO of Impelsys. "Increasingly discriminating readers will access sample pages and make quick, convenient purchases from anywhere in the world, further strengthening the financial position of university presses."