eNovel.com Signs Letter of Intent to Acquire Top Writing Site
RICHMOND, VA -- eNovel.com announced
today that a Letter of Intent has been signed to acquire closely held Novel Products, Inc., owner of The Amazing Instant Novelist site on America Online and the Web, one of the most popular sites for writers since its launch on AOL in 1995. The acquisition gives eNovel access to AOL's 26 million members through the Instant Novelist's placement on AOL at keyword novel.
The move also brings Instant Novelist founder Dan Hurley, one of the most prominent pioneers in the online writing scene, onto eNovel's management team. His career path has been a unique one, to put it mildly: 17 years ago, he took his manual Remington typewriter onto the streets of Chicago to begin writing stories for passersby, and soon became nationally known as the 60-Second Novelist. An article about him published in The Christian Science Monitor back in 1983 quoted Hurley as saying he aimed to "kick the literary establishment in the knees."
"My goal back then was to cut out the middle men — the agents, the publishers, the bookstores — standing between writers and readers,"
Hurley said today from his office in Upper Montclair, N.J. "That's precisely
what eNovel is going to do, but on a scale beyond my wildest dreams back
in 1983. The result will be monetary riches for writers far in excess
of the 6.4% they earn from traditional print publishers today, and literary
riches for readers."
Hurley's recent publication of his book, "The 60-Second Novelist," has led to appearances on NPR, CNN, the "Today" show and excerpts in Family Circle and the October 2000 Reader's Digest. As an award-winning reporter, former contributing editor of Psychology Today and a vice president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Hurley's career has been at the crossroads of writing, publishing and online enterprise.
Since its launch by the AOL Greenhouse, the Amazing Instant Novelist has expanded onto the Web at www.instantnovelist.com, developing a loyal following of some 100,000 unique visitors and 5 million impressions a month. Rather than focusing, as most writing sites do, on pedantic lessons in how to get published, the Instant Novelist takes a "just do it" approach, giving writers dozens of contests to write stories, poems and essays each week. In all, more than 1.2 million stories have already been electronically published on the site's message boards. The site has received extensive coverage in Wired, Fast Company, Crain's New York Business, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New York Times, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal and more.
The purchase will accelerate eNovel's growth and enable the company to capture significant market-share in the exploding market in electronic books (e-books). Exponential sales growth in e-books has been forecasted by the American Association of Publishers, as sales of e-reading devices grows from 20,000 as of March 2000 to 28 million devices in 2005.
"We believe that eNovel is set to become the number one brand in e-books,"
said Jack Singer, President/CEO of eNovel.com. "We have created a company
that can help authors get published and enable traditional publishers
to turn non-performing assets, such as out-of-print books and other e-books,
into revenue opportunities. eNovel has a multiple distribution-point model,
the top brand in self-publishing on the Web, access to AOL and growing
relationships with many technology, promotion and distribution partners."
The acquisition of the Amazing Instant Novelist will greatly benefit eNovel authors and industry partners and will accelerate its goal to provide rich popular-genre content to the growing e-reader and online market. eNovel's strategy, to combine a web of business-to-business partnerships with major portals and book e-tailers with its own distribution on eNovel.com and instantnovelist.com, will give the company unparalleled market reach.
About eNovel
eNovel operates in a dual capacity. First, it is a destination site for authors to publish, write, chat and learn and for guests to browse, read and purchase books. Second, eNovel is a business-to-business content provider supplying both proprietary and licensed content to major Internet retail and portal Web sites. eNovel aggregates proprietary content, content from traditional publishers, both in-print and out-of-print, public domain works and international/ethnic books. eNovel's mission is to make it possible for books written by people who love to write to be read by people who love to read. In so doing, eNovel will bring rightful recognition to as-yet unrecognized authors and countless hours of reading pleasure to millions around the world.
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