Amazon acquisition prints books on demand

Pacific Northwest

Amazon.com

Acquisition prints books on demand

Amazon.com acquired BookSurge for an undisclosed amount to enter the print-on-demand book business.

Closely held BookSurge has more than 10,000 titles that it prints when consumers place orders, Seattle-based Amazon.com, the largest Internet retailer, said yesterday in a statement.

Charleston, S.C.-based BookSurge, founded in 2000, focuses on generating revenue from out-of-print books. It offers its services to publishers through BookSurge Publisher Services and to authors through BookSurge Publishing.

Boeing

Ex-finance chief starts prison term

Former Boeing finance chief Michael Sears began serving a four-month prison sentence last week at a minimum-security federal prison camp in Oxford, Wis., a prison official said yesterday.

Sears, 57, arrived at the prison, located about 60 miles north of Madison, Wis., on Friday, said prison unit manager Phillip Shanks.

The former chief financial officer was sentenced in February to four months in prison and a $250,000 fine for his role in illegally recruiting Darleen Druyun, a top Air Force official, for a senior job with Boeing. Boeing fired Sears and Druyun in November 2003.

Diagnostic Ultrasound

Investment funds commit $16 million

Diagnostic Ultrasound of Bothell has raised $16 million from two investment funds under a financing agreement that could later bring an additional $18 million. The investors are DW Healthcare Partners and Rho Private Equity.

Diagnostic Ultrasound, whose noninvasive ultrasound instrument is used to diagnose bladder conditions and confirm proper catheterization, will use the funds to develop new products, explore acquisitions and expand from selling to hospitals and long-term-care facilities into the much bigger primary-care market, said spokeswoman Jessica McMorrow.

Wavelink

Profitability move cuts work force 25%

Kirkland-based Wavelink, which develops wireless software to connect a company's warehouse to its back-office systems, said yesterday that it laid off 25 percent of its employees to become profitable.

The reduction affected about 23 of its 95-person staff and was spread among its three offices in Kirkland; Midvale, Utah; and Redwood Shores, Calif. The Redwood Shores office will close.

Mainly engineering and sales employees were affected, said Eric Hermelee, Wavelink's vice president of marketing.

WhitePages.com

Directory service wins role with MSN

Seattle-based WhitePages.com said yesterday it will provide the online directory-assistance service for MSN's White Pages channel in the U.S., which is located on Microsoft's MSN home page.

WhitePages.com replaces Bellevue-based InfoSpace as the provider of the service, and estimates that it now has 30 percent of the online directory-assistance market in the U.S.

Compiled from Bloomberg News, Reuters and Seattle Times staff