NASHVILLE, Tenn. & LAVERGNE, Tenn.--Feb. 6, 2002-- Cokesbury.com, the retail arm of The United Methodist Publishing House, and Lightning Source Inc., a leader in providing digital content management solutions to the book industry, have formed an alliance for digital content management support and fulfillment for Cokesbury.com's newly launched e-book product offering. With the introduction and addition of e-books to the Cokesbury.com retail site, the alliance between Lightning Source and Cokesbury.com ushers a significant amount of religious e-book titles into the marketplace. Abingdon Press, an imprint of The United Methodist Publishing House, will be adding their religious titles to the Lightning Source library, including all of Lyle Schaller's church leadership books and many daily devotional titles. In addition to the Schaller selection, Cokesbury.com will launch its e-book offerings with a new line of original church leadership books: The Convergence eBook series. The first three titles in the series are Unfreezing Moves by Bill Easum, Road Runner by Tom Bandy and A Prophetic Compass for the Emerging Church by Tom Hohstadt. With the new launch of its e-book product offering, Abingdon and Cokesbury.com will be the first to release the downloadable Microsoft Reader and Adobe eBook Reader editions of The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible. "Cokesbury is highly motivated to offer e-books to the 50,000 customers who shop online with us,'' said Paul Franklyn, Director of ePublishing for Abingdon and Cokesbury.com. "Lightning Source's expertise in e-book fulfillment services is helping us build upon our business and offer our customers the greatest selection of religious product available.'' "We look forward to selling hundreds of religion e-books from dozens of publishers,'' said Jody Booher, Director of eCommerce for Cokesbury.com. "Lightning Source made it easy and a low risk for us to add automated functionality to our existing Cokesbury.com interface. Our objective now is to encourage more religious publishers to jump into the inevitable e-book movement.'' Ed Marino, President and CEO of Lightning Source Inc. stated, "We are pleased to offer our digital content solutions to Cokesbury.com and to contribute to the growth and development of e-books in the religious sector. As Lightning and its retail and publisher partners increase the reach of e-books to a wider base of users, many more consumers will come to understand, appreciate and purchase e-books.'' The Cokesbury.com eBook Store is the latest major retail project being powered by the Lightning Source digital fulfillment system. Lightning Source is currently the partner of choice for Amazon.com, Powells.com, and many others.