Archive for May 26th, 2009:

Are publishers too reclusive? Do they hide in their offices, refusing contact with the outside world? That’s the verdict of Carolyn Pitts, vice president at HarperCollins. In an article published in the online magazine Book Business, she argues that publishing companies need to become less anonymous and adopt “authentic, personalized, continuous engagement” with readers, reflecting the model of social media on the Internet. “There are no wallflowers,” she says, “at this digital dance.”

One bright spot noted by Pitts is HarperCollins’s own HarperStudio, a new, experimental imprint intended to address structural problems, including high advances, afflicting the publishing industry. As part of its marketing strategy, it gives Flip cameras to authors so they can create online videos for readers. Another attempt to communicate with readers is the HarperStudio blog, The 26th Story, written by the imprint’s staff. Recent posts discuss crowdsourcing for books (a collective brainstorming process for writing text), the use of public domain classics (such as Edith Wharton) for magazines, and the latest in Twitterature. HarperStudio seems to be directly addressing Pitts’s warning: “Anyone choosing reclusivity or anonymity over engagement chooses irrelevance.”

Here’s a video from the HarperStudio website of celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, who signed a ten-book deal with HarperCollins under the HarperStudio imprint.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•