Disney Digitizes Classic Children’s Books For New Subscription Site
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Disney (NYSE: DIS) hopes to ride the wave of eBooks’ rise with a new subscription-based site, Disney Digital Books. While interest in eBooks has generally been fueled by the popularity of Amazon’s Kindle and the anticipation building around Sony’s new e-readers, the children’s book segment has been largely overlooked, since most parents aren’t like to hand their kids a $200 device to read books. Besides, since most e-readers are still unable to product colorful pictures that are the staple of kids’ books, it makes more sense to focus on the full spectrum offered online. The annual subscription to access the site is $79.95 and is aimed at families with children between the ages of 2- and 12. The site will present digital reproductions of hundreds of Disney titles, including “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too” to “Hannah Montana: Crush-tastic!,” the NYT reports.
Other publishers have been stepping up their eBook offerings to kids lately. As the NYT notes, HarperCollins now has about 1,000 children’s titles available. And Scholastic has BookFlix, which also has videos tied to its book offerings. But Disney, which sells about 250 million children’s books annually, is poised to make the biggest splash in this still nascent area of eBooks. Aside from putting its entire catalog of kids’ classics online, the company is now looking to do the same for phones, while it plans to open the digital catalog internationally within the next two years.
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