The cause of online literature was served Tuesday with separate announcements by Time Warner and Microsoft that will boost trade publishing in one case and make popular fiction easy to download in the other.
Time Warner's iPublish.com is intended to unite readers, authors, and editors while exploring new avenues for production and distribution of various literary forms.
According to Time Warner's CEO of trade publishing, Laurence Kirshbaum, iPublish is the first dedicated Internet publishing venture from an American book publisher.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has established partnerships with publisher Simon & Schuster and barnesandnoble.com to get popular titles for its electronic book software.
First up are 15 titles based on the Star Trek TV series. They are available at the B&N site for immediate download, Microsoft said.
In a separate agreement involving Random House, Michael Crichton's novel Timeline will also be available to download from barnesandnoble.com.
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Game over: Its money gone and its chances of raising more practically nil, Toysmart.com has shut down and will go out of business unless a buyer can be found, company officials said.
The shuttering of Toysmart.com, in which the Walt Disney Co. has a majority stake, means the loss of roughly 170 jobs at the Waltham, Massachusetts-based company. A handful of employees remain to watch over things while potential buyers are courted.
The end came after a last-minute financing deal fell through last week.
Disney issued a brief statement basically admitting that Toysmart.com was unable to compete in what it called "an incredibly strong business that has some very strong players."
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Physician, heal thyself: Doctors across the United States are boycotting drugs made by Merck & Co. in a bitter fight over the collective bargaining rights of physicians, pharmacists, and other health-care professionals, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The boycott was called by the Federation of Physicians and Dentists, which wants to punish Merck for opposing a bill in Congress that would make it easier for doctors and other health-care professionals to band together and negotiate collectively with insurers over fees and contract terms.
Merck officials were mum, but the Times quoted some Merck employees as saying there had been a noticeable drop in sales.
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Eye on growth: Nortel Networks, the Canadian telecommunications equipment manufacturer, will buy the remainder of an Australian optical-component company to bolster its position in the all-optical Internet market.
Nortel will pony up $35.5 million for the remaining two-thirds of Photonic Technologies that it does not already own, the company said Tuesday.
Photonic develops technology for the manipulation and control of the polarization of light, critical for high-speed optical networks.
Reuters contributed to this report.**
