Tim Coates

PaidContent has a piece looking at two new startups that are trying to revolutionize the process of buying e-books. One of these, Bilbary, was founded by former Waterstones managing director Tim Coates, and aims to help publishers sell e-books directly to readers. It has almost 350,000 non-agency publisher e-books, and plans to add about 100,000 [...]

Two new book-related startups that launched in beta this week seek to redefine the book buying, browsing and selling experience. A host of reading-related startups to launch recently—Subtext, Readmill, Findings—focus on social and sharing but don't touch on the down-and-dirty, selling-more-books part.

Bilbary and Jellybooks are different. Both have UK-based, book-publishing-backgrounded founders and neither has Silicon Valley investors or big funding. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing—just that the sites are in early stages and somewhat barebones for now. Bilbary, founded by former UK bookstore chain Waterstones managing director Tim Coates, focuses on an

A British entrepreneur has pledged to support libraries facing the axe with profits from his ebook company, as he criticised the mismanagement of a system that "is not working".

Tim Coates, a former managing director of Waterstones, launched the Bilbary ebook site in America this week as a rival to Amazon and Apple's ebook retail operations. It will go live in Britain next month.

While setting up the company, he has continued to campaign for an overhaul of how libraries are managed.

Publishers need to place a greater emphasis in getting their backlist titles published digitally in order to make the e-reading market more "credible" according to Bilbary founder Tim Coates. Speaking at the OReilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York yesterday (February 14th), Coates said in order for the e-book industry to satisfy its customer base publishers need to move away from simply publishing "more" books to providing greater access to their older titles online. "Specifically readers want more access to the extensive and famous backlists from the major publishing houses.