Publishers Portal teams up with PW

Publishers Portal (TM), a program of Dial-A-Book, has announced today that it is teaming up with Publishers Weekly to create and distribute electronic copies of first chapters (and full-text PDFs, in some cases) from small and mid-sized publishers. (Full disclosure - I did some consulting for the early stages of this project.)

Dial-A-Book already does this for the larger publishers - Stanley Greenfield clears the rights, transfers the material to PDF, and distributes these chapters to libraries, online booksellers, and media outlets (The New York Times Book Review, for one). But his new Publishers Portal program allows publishers to come onto his website, enter key data points, upload the chapter or the full text of the book, and then that material gets distributed however the publishers wishes.

Publishers Weekly is offering a special banner on its website that will send traffic to Publishers Portal, and encourage publishers to participate. It's on PW's homepage, at the top right.