Audio Book Club, Inc. Signs Exclusive Online Marketing Agreement With Mail.com; Company Guaranteed a Minimum Number of New Club Members During Next 12 Months.

MORRISTOWN, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 20, 1999--

Audio Book Club, Inc. (AMEX: KLB) announced today that it has entered into an online marketing alliance with Mail.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: MAIL), a global provider of personalized e-mail and advanced messaging services to consumer and businesses through its www.mail.com website and through various top-branded websites, ISPs and corporations. Audio Book Club will serve as the exclusive audiobook seller to be promoted by Mail.com during the term of the alliance.

As part of the agreement, Mail.com has guaranteed a minimum number of new members during the next 12 months to be obtained through Audio Book Club promotions sent by email to users of the Mail.com service who have expressed their interest in receiving such information. Mail.com provides e-mail outsourcing services for brand name organizations such as NBC, CNN, Time Warner, CBS SportsLine, Prodigy, GTE, Standard & Poor's, and CNET. Specific terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Commenting on the agreement, Norton Herrick, Chairman and CEO of Audio Book Club, stated, "Given Mail.com's tremendous foothold in the Internet messaging services and its existing user base of over six million e-mail boxes, we believe that today's agreement provides us an excellent opportunity to further expand our new member recruitment campaign over the Internet and to continue to build our e-commerce presence. Today, Mail.com provides outsourced email services for many of the Internet's most frequented locations including Earthlink, RollingStone.com, Snap.com, and CNNSI.com, among numerous others - granting us indirect access to visitors of these sites, as well."

Mail.com, a veteran of the Internet world, began offering Email services in 1996 under the iName.com banner. In January 1999, the company changed its name to Mail.com, Inc. to better reflect its position as a global provider of messaging services. Over the past three years, Mail.com has established over six million e-mail boxes, outsourced Email for many of the best brand-name sites on the Web, and provided compelling programs for over 100 advertisers to reach targeted audiences. The Mail.com Network was recently ranked in the top ten online advertising networks by Media Metrix. Through its strong partner programs, Mail.com is growing its member base at an increasing rate, establishing hundreds of thousands of new Emailboxes each month. Members benefit from integrated Email services which offer them the flexibility to manage their Email in the way that's right for them. They can read Email on the Web, forward Emails to any address of their choice, or access their Emails using more traditional Email programs. In addition, members benefit from anywhere Email access, reliable service, a broad range of unique Email addresses, Mail.com's proprietary spam detection technology -- and many other rich product features.

Audio Book Club, Inc. is the world's largest marketer of audiobooks through its membership club which markets and sells audiobooks and music via the Internet at www.audiobookclub.com and by mail order. On July 23rd, the Company will also launch Mediabay.com (a preview of which is presently available at www.mediabay.com). The launch will coincide with Mediabay.com's live webcast of Woodstock 99 being held July 23-25. Mediabay.com will offer visitors a single location for the entertainment features of leading content-driven websites and the product selection and service of great commerce-driven sites. Audio Book Club, Inc. is also a publisher of audio and video content including classic radio and video programs and markets and sells that content on audio cassettes, CDs and video cassettes via numerous distribution channels including the Internet at www.radiospirits.com, catalogues, radio shows, retail and other outlets. Since commencing operations in January 1994, Audio Book Club, Inc. has engaged in an aggressive membership recruitment program to establish a core Audio Book Club member base. Following its recent acquisitions of Doubleday's Audiobooks Direct and Columbia House's Audiobook Club, Audio Book Club, Inc. now has a combined membership and customer database of over 2 million names.

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995: The statements which are not historical facts contained in this press release are forward looking statements that involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Audio Book Club, Inc. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to, the ability of the Audio Book Club, Inc. to successfully integrate the newly acquired businesses into its operations and the uncertainty regarding the actual effect of the acquisitions on the Audio Book Club, Inc. risks relating to the Company's direct mail campaigns and its ability to retain members to its book club, risks relating to the Company's growth strategy, dependence on third party service providers, uncertainty of the scope of future product returns, collection and risks associated with selling products on credit, competition and other risks detailed in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The words "believe" and "should" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date the statement was made.