SUNNYVALE, Calif.- Sept. 5, 2001--As part of its continuing effort to offer consumers the widest selection of stores and products, Yahoo!, a leading online commerce destination, today announced that Yahoo! Shopping has signed agreements with four major publishing houses to launch a one-stop e-book destination with unprecedented publisher participation. The agreements with Penguin Putnam, Simon & Schuster, Random House, and HarperCollins will make Yahoo! Shopping one of the first commerce platforms to offer consumers a quality collection of titles from multiple publishers. Recently ranked the No. 1 portal shopping destination on the Web (Nielsen//NetRatings, May 2001) Yahoo! Shopping provides publishers with exposure to the largest purchasing audience on the Web. "Yahoo! is pleased to provide consumers with a new e-book shopping destination featuring an impressive collection of quality e-book titles from four of the largest publishing houses,'' said Rob Solomon, vice president and general manager of Yahoo! Shopping. "As technologyenables consumers to access digital content more conveniently, we anticipate that there will be increasing demand for e-books. Aggregating a broad collection of the most sought after titles in multiple e-book formats positions us effectively to meet these needs today and to meet growing consumer demand in the future.'' Available today, consumers will find a diverse collection of titles within the e-books category on Yahoo! Shopping. The site features e-book content from best-selling authors including Patricia Cornwell, Stephen King, and Lisa Scottoline to name a few. Consumers can search using the author's name, title, category or ISBN. Shoppers who prefer to browse for products will enjoy using various recommendation features, which highlight titles specific to their interests. "What's exciting about the Yahoo! e-book site is that all parties involved are converging to do what they do best in their core businesses,'' said Phyllis Grann, chief executive officer and president, Penguin Putnam. "The publishing houses are providing agreat list of authors, and Yahoo! Shopping is offering a centralized and user-friendly e-book platform to its tremendous audience of online consumers.'' "With the launch of the Yahoo! e-book site, electronic publishing takes another important step toward the mainstream,'' said Jack Romanos, president and chief operating officer, Simon & Schuster, Inc. "Yahoo!'s potent combination of content and commerce is an exciting new model for digital distribution, and provides publishers with the opportunity to forge a closer connection to our ultimate customer, those who read and listen to our books.'' Virtually all book categories are represented on the site, including: recent bestsellers, mysteries, thrillers, romance, science fiction, desktop reference books, college textbooks, travel, business and more. The growing collection of more than 1,000 listings include popular titles such as Girls Guide to Fishing and Hunting by Melissa Bank, Star Trek books including the e-book exclusive series Star Trek: S.C.E , Fodor's eBook Travel Guides from Random House Inc., and Middle Age by Joyce Carol Oates. E-books are easy to download, utilizing either Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader or Microsoft Reader. Both software programs are free of charge and take only a few moments to download from links that are made conveniently available on Yahoo! Shopping.