AlwaysOn Selects Blurb as OnMedia Top 100 Winner
Recognized for game-changing strategies in advertising, marketing, and promotion
San Francisco, Calif. – January 29, 2008 –
Blurb, the creative book publishing service, today announced that AlwaysOn chose it as one of the OnMedia 100 Winners. Inclusion in the OnMedia 100 signifies major developments in the creation of marketing tools, services, venues, and advertising, branding, and public relations campaigns. The AlwaysOn editorial team and global industry experts specially selected Blurb based on five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz. This honor follows recent news of Blurb's explosive growth in 2007.
“Blurb set out to democratize traditional publishing by providing the tools to help people create, publish, and profit from books on their own terms,” said Eileen Gittins, Blurb's founder and CEO. “Being recognized by AlwaysOn is yet another indicator that we're accomplishing our goal, and we're thrilled to be an OnMedia 100 winner.”
Blurb and the OnMedia 100 Top Private Companies will be honored at the OnMedia conference in New York City. This executive event features technology CEO's from Silicon Valley leading presentations and high-level debates with the global advertising and media establishment, about disrupting user behavior and creating new opportunities in the marketing, branding, advertising, and public relations industries.
Blurb certainly fits the bill: The company produced nearly 80,000 unique book titles in 2007. To put this in perspective, Simon & Schuster publishes approximately 1,800 titles annually, and Random House, with more than 100 editorially independent imprints worldwide, published 9,000 new titles in 2006. Blurb's title output is nearly 8x the combined number of titles released by these traditional publishing houses, and as a result, the company doubled in size every three months in 2007.
Fifty of the top CEO's from the OnMedia 100 will present their market strategies to a panel of industry experts in a "CEO Showcase."
"The OnMedia 100 winners have excelled in key strategic areas in the advertising, marketing, public relations, and promotion industry," said Tony Perkins, founder and CEO of AlwaysOn. "We congratulate them for their success in introducing new tools, services, and venues for marketers to have at their fingertips and for use to take their business to the next level in innovation."
The OnMedia 100 was selected from over hundreds of companies, nominated by a panel of industry experts in the online ad service, technology, community platform, mobile advertising, marketing, and Web analytic sectors from around the world.
To create and publish a Blurb book, users start by downloading Blurb BookSmart™ software from the Blurb Web site. Blurb's BookSmart software is free, runs on a Mac or PC, and offers a wide variety of book layouts created by professional book designers. The software enables anyone to affordably make, share, and market beautiful, bookstore-quality books. Prices start at $12.95 and authors can order only one book or many.
A full list of all the OnMedia 100 winners can be found on the AlwaysOn Web site at http://www.alwayson.goingon.com/
About Blurb
Blurb is a company and a community that believes passionately in the power of books: making, reading, sharing, and selling them. Blurb’s creative publishing service is simple and smart enough to make anyone an author – every blogger, artist, marketer, photographer, traveler, entrepreneur, poet, everyone. Additionally, Blurb’s bookstore and online marketing tools let Blurb authors sell and promote their books, and keep 100% of the author’s markup. Blurb’s community features – designed to encourage collaboration and communication – are defining social print media. Founded by Eileen Gittins in 2004 and funded by Canaan Partners and Anthem Venture Partners, Blurb is bringing book publishing to the masses. Blurb BookSmart™ software is free for Mac or PC; users pay only when they publish their books. The software is available for download at www.blurb.com.
About AlwaysOn
AlwaysOn ignited the open-media revolution in early 2003 by being the first media brand to launch a community blog network. In 2004, AlwaysOn continued to lead the industry in innovation by engaging its bloggers in a social network. AlwaysOn is also revolutionizing the media business by applying its open-media principles to its executive event series (OnMedia NYC, Venture Summit East and West, On Hollywood, The Broadband Digital, Stanford Summit, and Going Green) and quarterly print "blogozine". No other media brand has dared to create such open interaction with its readers and event participants.
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