CourseSmart Partners with Metrodigi to Create Interactive eTextbooks

SAN MATEO, Calif., May 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- CourseSmart®, a leading Educational Services Platform and the world's largest provider of digital course materials, and Metrodigi®, a leading eBook development and publishing software company, today announced a new partnership at BookExpo America, taking place this week in New York City. For the first time, this collaboration allows publishers to develop interactive eTextbooks more efficiently and affordably. Students benefit from access to highly interactive and visual course materials through CourseSmart's new Interactive Reader, available across a wide range of devices including laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones.

Metrodigi's standards based eBook development platform Chaucer® empowers publishers to create, manage, and publish highly interactive digital content. Traditionally, the high cost of development has deterred many publishers from producing interactive learning materials. Now, with smart book structuring algorithms and support for a variety of eBook formats, including the industry standard EPUB 3, Chaucer dramatically reduces the time, cost and complexity of creating enhanced educational content. The EPUB 3 standard allows for broader distribution, including through CourseSmart's new Interactive Reader.

"Interactive, visual and engaging digital content is the future of learning materials and we are excited to form a partnership that will dramatically drive down the cost to create this content," said CourseSmart CEO Sean Devine. "We anticipate a growing catalog of the interactive content available in our new Interactive Reader and are eager to support the positive impacts on student engagement and learning."

This interactive content will add to CourseSmart's growing catalogue of eTextbooks and digital course materials, which currently includes more than 40,000 titles from 60 publishers, or about 90% of all core higher education textbooks in use today.

"We are continually expanding our network of publishers and are excited Chaucer is enabling our partners to create more compelling and interactive content," said Steven McKinney, Metrodigi CEO. "By combining our experience creating digital materials in other areas, including comics, art books, children's books and cookbooks, with CourseSmart's expertise in higher education, we have the ability to create incredibly compelling, cross-platform content for the education sector."

• Chaucer's built-in book editor enables publishers to integrate digital enhancements, including video, audio, quizzes, animations and more with a simple drag and drop interface.
• Chaucer's powerful book element ranking algorithm (BER™) intelligently analyzes and semantically structures book elements to create consistent styling, cleaner code and reusable components.

If you would like to learn more about creating interactive course materials through CourseSmart and Metrodigi, please visit www.metrodigi.com/chaucer.

About CourseSmart®
CourseSmart is a leading Educational Services Platform and the only provider of digital course materials able to combine curriculum, content and delivery into a single solution. Founded in 2007, the San Mateo, Calif.–based company provides services to four business segments: online direct retail for students; indirect distribution of course materials to students through bookstores; online faculty textbook evaluation services; and institutional solutions for faculty and students that are integrated within campus technology ecosystems. CourseSmart improves the educational experience by offering all users, including those with print–related disabilities, anytime, anywhere access to the course content they need. With more than 90% of the same core titles offered by major print publishers, the company's eTextbooks can be purchased for up to 60% less than the cost of new print textbooks. For more information about CourseSmart, visit the company's Web site at www.coursesmart.com.

About Metrodigi®
Metrodigi is an industry leading eBook development and software solutions provider based in Larkspur, Calif.  Metrodigi's cloud-based eBook development platform, Chaucer, is the most powerful and versatile eBook creation, conversion and workflow management tool in the industry. Metrodigi specializes in highly designed, interactive eBook creation for many of the largest publishers, media organizations and technology companies in the world. Metrodigi's software provides intelligent conversion to the industry standard EPUB, rapid interactivity deployment within a full-fledged authoring and content management application in the cloud.

Chaucer TM & © 2013 Metrodigi, Inc. All rights reserved.

Media Contact:
Jessica Nelson
kwittken + company
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SOURCE CourseSmart