May 19th, 2009

Above the Treeline, a leading provider of business intelligence tools for booksellers and publishers, announced today that the new interactive catalog “Edelweiss” will be launched at the forthcoming BookExpo America (BEA) in New York City. Following a highly successful beta test period that began last fall and involved 10 leading publishers, a selection of their reps, and 40 retailers and other end users, Edelweiss will now be made available to the entire publishing community.

“The transition to online catalogs is inevitable” said John Rubin, the founder and CEO of Above the Treeline, “but if every publisher develops their own solution, the value to booksellers and others will be greatly diminished. Edelweiss was developed with the interests and needs of booksellers very much in mind—offering a single, universal interface to search and review titles by many publishers.”

Rubin also emphasizes the interactive nature of Edelweiss: “Our solution is about very much more than converting a paper catalog to a downloadable PDF or a series of title-specific web pages. Edelweiss was designed to support the sales process by offering tools for sales reps to markup catalogs for their accounts, include the sales history of comparable titles, and track orders. It’s about facilitating a more productive relationship between a sales force and their customers.” Sales reps can easily upload lists of their accounts to allow them to use the system to target their accounts with customized catalogs.
Publishers already working with Edelweiss for the fall season range from major trade houses like HarperCollins, Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Penguin Group (USA); to leading mid-sized publishers like Chronicle Books and Workman; to university presses and others such as Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, Ingram Publisher Services, and Thomas Nelson. Many more publishers are expected to come on board soon. Above the Treeline continues to ramp up for the next selling season and has expanded Edelweiss access to nearly 200 current Above the Treeline bookstores, as well as a more than 200 additional retail accounts.

Edelweiss is available at no charge to booksellers, regardless of their current Above the Treeline affiliation, as well as to other industry catalog users. While custom catalog recipients don’t need to register to review a publisher mailing, registered users will have access to all of the publisher catalogs in Edelweiss, and will be able to take advantage of
2 additional features such the ability to export orders and bibliographic records for use within their POS system.

Above the Treeline will hold demonstrations of Edelweiss at BEA. Ongoing Edelweiss demonstrations will be presented at the Above the Treeline booth (#4130) on the exhibit floor. Additional demonstrations will be held on Friday and Saturday mornings from 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. in Room 1E02 on the lower concourse.

Members of the press are invited to request a sneak preview of Edelweiss in advance of BEA by contacting: sales@abovethetreeline.com. For further information contact John Rubin on (734) 996-2730.