Fatbrain.com Provides Positive Outlook for Third Quarter of Fiscal 2000.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 17, 1999--

Fatbrain.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: FATB), the Internet's most comprehensive bookstore for professionals, today announced preliminary results that are above consensus analyst estimates for the third fiscal quarter ended October 31, 1999. The Company expects revenues for the quarter to be approximately $10 million and net loss per share to be between $0.80 and $0.82. Fatbrain.com will announce complete financial results for the third quarter after the close of market on November 23, 1999.

Chris MacAskill, president and chief executive officer, commented, "I am pleased to report that we expect another quarter of strong revenue growth, primarily driven by the addition of new business-to-business partners in our corporate Intranet bookstore and print-on-demand operations. We are also encouraged by the positive initial reaction to our new eMatter initiative, which, prior to an aggressive marketing campaign, has already attracted a rich variety of documents from well-known authors and publishers and over 5,000 aspiring authors."

About Fatbrain.com

Fatbrain.com(TM), the Internet's most comprehensive bookstore for professionals, is the first e-commerce provider to deliver secure digital publishing through its eMatter initiative. Recently named the number two fastest-growing public company in Silicon Valley, Fatbrain.com offers a world-class selection of books, training materials and documentation for professionals in business and finance, technology, other industries and now the general interest category. Through its corporate intranet bookstore program, Fatbrain.com is accessible from the desktops of more than 1.3 million employees at customer sites. Fatbrain.com offers discounts of up to 40 percent, and all in-stock orders placed by 4 PM PST ship the same business day. Visit Fatbrain.com on the Web at http://www.fatbrain.com.

About eMatter

The eMatter program offers authors flexible publishing options and royalties of at least 50 percent on every copy sold. eMatter combines newly developed digital rights technologies with Fatbrain.com's established community of customers to provide the first-ever secure publishing channel for the exchange of information between writers and readers everywhere. To secure eMatter documents, Fatbrain.com has developed new patent-pending secure digital rights technologies to protect the ownership rights of the document in Windows versions of Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). eMatter documents are expected to be available in Macintosh and UNIX versions in early 2000. Downloaded eMatter files have a persistent security wrapper that ensures that content is protected even if it is redistributed; only users who have purchased the eMatter file will be able to read it. If a copy of the eMatter file is opened on a different computer, the new reader is offered the option to purchase the work.

This announcement may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties including, among others, Fatbrain.com's limited operating history, anticipated losses, the unpredictability of its future revenues, competition, risks associated with system development and operation risks, management of potential growth, and risks of new business areas, international expansion, business combinations, and strategic alliances. Actual results could differ materially from those discussed. More information about factors that potentially could affect Fatbrain.com's financial results is included in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Registration Statement filed under its original name, Computer Literacy, Inc., on Form SB-2 on November 19, 1998, as amended. All forward looking statements are based on information available to the Company on the date hereof, and the Company assumes no obligation to update such statements.

Fatbrain.com is a trademark of Fatbrain.com, Inc. All company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.