By Edward Nawotka

NEW YORK: “We were at the Beijing Book Fair last year in a meeting with Chinese, US and UK publishers and the question that most often came up was who do we deal with, which department and which division do we deal with,” says Jon Malinowski, president of the Combined Book Exhibit, a company that displays US publishers titles in a collective stand at trade shows around the world. “Our answer to this is PubMatch.org.”

Malinowski describes PubMatch.org, which launched in April, as a “year-round virtual book fair.” The site allows publishers, agents, authors, illustrators and photographers to create online profiles and enter data in more than 140 categories. “Users can then query the database to come up with an answer for their needs,” says Malinowski.

“It’s an open source networking database – a social site with business flair,” he says. “One that’s simple and, most important, free.” He says the site will look to sustain itself through advertising.

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Among the most robust functions is the ability for anyone to upload a title (as a PDF) and then indicate a set number of pages a user can view, something similar to Google Book Search. Among the companies already participating is Minnesota based education publisher Capstone Press, which has uploaded some 1,100 titles.

“Originally, we thought the Asian, Indian and emerging markets would benefit most from the site, but it’s really publishers all over the globe,” he said. “In one week in May we had 6,000 page views.” Currently there are 291 users signed onto the site, and visitors from 103 countries have browsed the information on PubMatch.

SIGN UP: For PubMatch.org

CONTACT: Jon Malinowski directly.

READ: More about the Combined Book Exhibit