According to Vikram Savkar, the senior vice president and publishing director at NPG, Scitable now reaches more than 500, 000 students in 165 countries since its launch last year.

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According to Belinda Budge, publishing director of Thorsons, Britain's biggest self-help publisher and part of Harper Collins, sales of books about yoga and reiki, an Oriental healing system, have exploded in the past 18 months.

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"Duke Nukem is a legend in his own time, and he'd be the first person to tell you that, " said Rob Carroll, Tapjoy's Director of Publishing for Tapjoy.

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Epstein, who was the editorial director at Random House for 40 years, says the machine embodies the future of publishing.

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Among these were: an entrepreneur who had just sold her business for an eight-figure sum, the managing director of an investment bank, a U.S. manager of an international hotel chain, a publishing executive, the owner of a catering firm, and a specialist on military affairs in the Middle East who works at the UN.

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