– Worldwide Distribution Agreement Forged for “Bible of the Book Business” –

NEW YORK—September 29, 2020—Publishers Weekly and East View Information Services are pleased to announce a new worldwide distribution agreement for the Publishers Weekly Digital Archive. The archive chronicles the history of the U.S., British and international publishing industry, bringing to light a trove of material from the last 150 years of the book business, showing in fine detail the progress book publishing has made since the magazine’s founding in 1872.

The archive is composed of 7,500 past issues of Publishers Weekly, with more than 650,000 fully searchable pages. In addition to the news articles and features, the archive hosts 5,000 author interviews, bestsellers lists beginning in 1895 and 435,000 book reviews beginning in the 1940s.

Especially valuable for scholars and students, each archived issue includes all advertising, in context. Pages may be saved as PDF files and, when necessary, corrected with the Wiki-style widget.

“East View Information Services is the right distribution partner to bring the Publishers Weekly Digital Archive to a worldwide stage—thereby fulfilling my long-held vision of making Publishers Weekly’s rich chronicle of the publishing world a vibrant resource for all,” said George Slowik Jr., president and owner of PWxyz, parent company of Publishers Weekly. “East View is deeply respected in the academic and library markets, where the PW Digital Archive can best serve scholars and students of American and international publishing, popular culture, history, literature and the politics of publishing.”

“The Publishers Weekly Digital Archive offers rich, interdisciplinary insight into 150 years of American publishing history, the careers of canonical authors, public education and literary tastes. Long the go-to resource for the $25-billion USA book publishing industry, this influential periodical sits at the intersection of commerce, culture and intellectual development,” said Kent D. Lee, East View president and CEO. “The rise of Amazon, the Google Books controversy, the effect of e-books and the fate of independent booksellers are all covered, always from an in-the-trenches, dog-in-this-fight perspective. The weekly bestseller lists, trade announcements, book reviews and author profiles are an irreplaceable source of research since post–Civil War Reconstruction. Perhaps no other resource offers a chronicle of the development of so many literary influencers from their earliest stages—be they Mark Twain, JD Salinger, Oprah Winfrey or Joyce Carol Oates—and charts their impact on the reading public and American society.”

Lee added, “East View is privileged to expand access to this exhaustive online archive, particularly at this time when access to original print collections is limited.”

The agreement includes exclusive distribution worldwide, with Saudi Arabia as the sole nonexclusive, shared territory.

East View offers demonstrations for libraries worldwide, which may be requested at www.eastview.com/publishers-weekly

About Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly (www.publishersweekly.com) is the international news platform of the book publishing industry. Founded in 1872 and published weekly since then, the magazine boasts 1.23 million social media followers; publishes 10 e-newsletters, BookLife (a semimonthly supplement), two blogs, a mobile edition, digital editions, apps and podcasts; and features a thriving website that reaches 14 million unique visitors annually.

For more information, contact Grant Bistram, marketing director, East View Information Services, tel. +1-952-252-1201, [email protected], or Christi Cassidy, Publishers Weekly, tel. +1-917-217-4269, [email protected].