The New York Times has launched two e-book publishing programs in partnership with digital startups Byliner and Vook, the paper announced Thursday.
Byliner, which collects and aggregates long-form narratives from the archives of leading publications including the New Yorker, will co-publish up to a dozen original e-books in the next year featuring Times reporting, called "Originals." The stories will range in length from 10,000- to 20,000-words.
The first title will be "Snow Fall: the Avalanche at Tunnel Creek" by Times reporter John Branch, a tale of skiers caught in an avalanche. The story stems from an article slated for publication in Monday's paper and will be available for purchase on Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iBooks, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Byliner.com and NYTStore.com for $2.99.
"Byliner's mission is to bring readers great stories by great writers, and we're thrilled to be collaborating with the New York Times on this series of original narratives," John Tayman, Byliner's founder and CEO, said in a statement. "The Times has a deep and unparalleled tradition of extraordinary journalism, and we look forward to finding, developing, and publishing many important and lasting stories together."
Future contributors to the Times-Byliner collaboration include Pulitzer-Prize-winner David Leonhardt, the Times's Washington bureau chief, and Pulitzer-winner James B. Stewart, the Times's "Common Sense" columnist and author of "Den of Thieves," among other books.
"Our access to quality journalism and talented writers who can build on that content lends itself to the e-book platform," Gerald Marzorati, editor for editorial development at the Times, said in a statement. "We are excited to deliver the very best long-form journalism to readers, in collaboration with Byliner for our New York Times / Byliner Originals and in utilizing the Vook platform for our archival e-books."
With Vook, another e-book publishing platform, the Times will launch TimesFiles, collections of archived articles about a specific event or topic.
TimesFiles will kick off next Monday with 25 e-books, with "many more" expected in 2013, the Times said.
TimesFiles books will sell on the same e-book platforms, save Byliner.com, as the Originals.
Some of the first titles include "The Fall of the Berlin Wall," "George Steinbrenner and the Yankees" and "The Life and Films of John Hughes."
"The New York Times produces some of the best journalism in the world, and e-books are the perfect way to curate and collect great reporting and commentary into compelling long-form narratives, easily accessible by readers on mobile devices and e-readers," Matthew Cavnar, vice president of business development at Vook, said in a statement. "Vook is proud to help The New York Times scale production of beautifully styled e-books, quickly and efficiently bringing many titles to the marketplace."