UK magazine publisher Future Publishing has opted for British Telecom's (BT) Click&Buy service to help boost its online business.

Computer Arts is the first title in its portfolio to benefit from the deal, with creative tutorials
from the magazine being available to purchase and download as PDF (Portable Document Format) files for as little as 99p.

The BT Click&Buy service allows purchases to be made by debit or credit card or charged to the purchaser's BT telephone bill. Consumers must initially open an account with the service and then retain a username and password for future purchases.

John Weir, publishing director of Future's Digital portfolio, said: "The idea behind this initiative is to expand our online offering by providing our site visitors with a better taste of Future's products through downloads.

"An additional aim is to potentially increase our readership by reaching and providing content to any overseas readers."

Future is currently considering rolling out the BT Click&Buy service across a number of its magazines including Digital Camera Magazine and Your Family Tree.

BT charges an initial set-up fee for publishers and other companies that wish to use Click&Buy to sell their products. Subsequent commission rates are negotiated on a case-by-case basis according to usage and revenue levels.

It is likely, however, that Future Publishing will be hoping that increased consumer confidence and the low prices of its offerings will encourage sufficient volume of sales to make the service cost-effective.

Leah Moore of Future's communications department believes that any publisher offering unique content is now in a good position to profit from it online.

"You cannot charge for content that users can simply click away and find on other sites/mediums for free. However, when a web publication is confident that the content it has is valuable and cannot be accessed on other sites for free it will charge for it.

"The market is likely to move to a position where each web publication has sections of free and premium content. I think we are already seeing this with news sites and science journals in particular."

See also:
http://www.btclickandbuy.com/
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/

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