Baker & Taylor, Inc., a distributor of digital and physical books, together with K-NFB Reading Technology, developer of the Blio e-reading application, have announced a distribution agreement with indie ebooks distributor Smashwords. The deal will bring nearly 100,000 independently-published ebooks to the Blio store.
Blio is the feature-rich e-reading application that allows readers to experience e-reading in a new way, and use their digital library across multiple devices. Smashwords offers a catalogue of over 100,000 original titles representing 37,000 indie authors and small presses around the world.
The agreement will also bring Smashwords ebooks to public libraries that subscribe to Baker & Taylor's new Axis360 digital media platform. Axis360, which was launched in 2011, has been deployed by several top public library systems in the US.
Using Blio, readers can sample and purchase Smashwords books, create digital libraries for purchased and sampled titles, publish text or YouTube video book reviews, and 'favourite' their chosen authors, publishers and titles.
