Baker & Taylor to Offer Smashwords ebooks in Blio eReading Application

From the press release:

Baker & Taylor, Inc., the world’s largest distributor of digital and physical books, together with K-NFB Reading Technology, developer of the Blio eReading application, today announced a distribution agreement with Smashwords that will bring nearly 100,000 independently-published ebooks to the Blio store.

Blio is the feature-rich ereading application that allows readers to experience ereading in a new way, and use their digital library across multiple devices.  Smashwords is the leading distributor of indie (self-published) ebooks, offering a catalog of over 100,000 original titles representing 37,000 indie authors and small presses around the world.

“Now that Blio offers the Smashwords catalogue, there is a really exciting opportunity for readers to discover the best in up-and-coming and independent authors and to have a great digital experience reading those books,” said Bob Nelson, president of Baker & Taylor’s Digital Group. “Our agreement with Smashwords expands the Blio library, offering new works across every genre.”

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 last year, has been deployed by several top public library systems in the U.S. Dozens more libraries are converting to the platform as well.

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 “favorite” their chosen authors, publishers and titles.

“This agreement expands the global reach of the Smashwords distribution network,” said Mark Coker, founder Smashwords. “Blio offers a rich digital reading experience for our reflowable books, and is widely accessible across a range of devices and operating systems.  I’m also pleased to see our books gain increased exposure to library patrons as Baker & Taylor rolls out its new Axis360 digital media platform to libraries in the months and years ahead.”