Safari Books Online Buys Threepress Consulting, Makers of the Ibis Reader (HTML5 App)
Safari Books Online, an early pioneer in distributing books and content online, just bought Threepress Consulting, a current pioneer in distributing books and content online. Talk about fitting a round peg into a round hole. Liza said it best:
"Both companies have a mission to provide high-quality, cross-platform access to books in a model that benefits both readers and publishers. Safari provides us with an unparalleled reserve of content, sales team, marketing savvy, and publisher relationships. We’re bringing our focus on standards, accessibility, interactivity, and emerging technology. "
Safari Books Online was founded just over 10 years ago as a joint venture between O’Reilly and Pearson Education. It has since grown into one of the bigger and better on-demand digital libraries for technology, creative, business and management professionals. Its library now contains over 20,000 titles.
Safari hasn’t gotten much mention on this blog, but Threepress has. They’ve been getting attention for their several Epub and Epub 3 tools, and I’m mentioned Liza Daly once or twice when she has posted conference presentations on the Threepress blog. These are the folks behind the Ibis Reader, a browser based Epub reading app that launched last year. Threepress is also responsible for creating and maintaining EpubCheck, the online Epub validator. But those are just 2 demo projects released byThreepress; they do much more.
As part of the acquisition, the Threepress staff will join the Safari Books Online engineering team and work from their East Coast and Bay Area offices. Threepress co-founders Liza Daly and Keith Fahlgren will head the engineering dept as VP of Engineering and Director of Engineering, respectively. The sale was complete on 1 January, and the terms have not been disclosed.
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