Montreal

MONTREAL, April 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Playster, the all-inclusive digital multimedia streaming platform, today announced a content deal with Simon & Schuster, one of the world's largest book publishers. The agreement will provide unlimited access to a vast number of bestselling backlist ebook titles from the publisher's U.S. and international catalog.

The Canadian province of Quebec has about 6 million French-speaking inhabitants. In comparison there are only 4.2 million French-speakers in Belgium. French publishers have got the point and export their goods there, but this has not prevented home-grown equivalents from springing up. Indeed some, such as Boréal, Leméac, L'Hexagone, Lux Editeur, XYZ and Mémoire d'Encrier, have broken into the international market.

French publishers such as Bayard Jeunesse Canada and Flammarion Québec straddle the great divide, represented in both France and Quebec, along similar lines to ventures by publishers marketing books in English or Spanish.

Already known in the industry for its forward-looking environmental strategy, TC Transcontinental is proud to announce that it is broadening the internal and external scope of its Paper Purchasing Policy by stipulating, among other things, that recycled or certified papers be used for its printing and own publishing activities. As part of TC Transcontinental's commitment to continual improvement, the Corporation has updated its policy and reiterates its commitment to encouraging its customers to choose certified papers when recycled paper is unavailable, so that by working together we can significantly diminish environmental and social impacts.

If we start to think of “books as data,” then the traditional publisher’s role starts to sound a lot like the role of providing an API: A publisher’s job is to manage how and when and under what circumstances people (readers) or other services (book stores, libraries, other?) access books (data).

We know what this job looks like in the old world of bound paper and bricks and mortar stores, and we’re pretty sure we understand it in a world of EPUB and Kindle.

But as we move into a primarily digital world…

PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire refers to his company as “the indie rock band of ebooks startups,” which is why, unless you’ve been watching PandoDaily really closely, you wouldn’t have seen much of it in the media.

Today, just like an indie band that relies on its fan base for its survival, two-year-old PressBooks has announced that it is making its free book publishing software open source. McGuire, a Montreal-based entrepreneur who also founded crowdsourced audiobooks publisher Librivox, hopes that third-party developers can help PressBooks expand the meaning and utility of ebooks.

Quebecor Media Inc. is happy to announce a new partnership with ReadBooks SAS, a France and Quebec-based company specializing in multi-language ebook libraries, software and consulting services. This partnership, which includes a minority participation in ReadBooks, will foster the development of new software for Archambault and Paragraph that will allow them to increase their offering and enhance the reading experience.

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