Monthly Archives: August 2008

A HarperCollins trifecta (and some change)

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Eoin Purcell

While their websites disappoint
HarperCollins deliver three solid blogs that I have been aware of for a little while, each nicely focused and two of them driven by excellent content.

The Fifth Estate blog is by far the most active as far as I can tell and is one I have been aware of for a while (though I need to add it to the Publisher’s Blogs link section). As an example of its output this post seems as good as any:

What sets Glastonbury apart from other music festivals? Apart from the size it has a variety of political and social messages to listen to, with this in mind I ventured to the Left Field and the Socialist Bookshop…

The Olive Reader is a smart little blog that functions as Harper Perennial’s blog. It has a rather cool feature on it’s about page, the desks of the contributors minus the actual contributor, here. Also in a fancy pants feature they have an Olive TV link too which drops you straight into their YouTube channel. Sweet.

Authonomy is the beta online slush pile system. It has been quiet for a while but in the last little bit it has kicked into overdrive. Today for instance they launched the key features of that community, The Editors

In my review I stumbled onto more blogs run by Harper imprints, some from the UK, some the us and some from Australia. There is a poetry blog, an Eos blog and a Voyager blog. All are worth enjoying.

The assessment
Overall HarperCollins seem to be on top of blogs. If it can be done they seem to be doing it. The links to video clips are nice, the blogs are engaging and not purely pumping pr at readers. Authonomy seems to be getting to grips with its role in the fledgling community too.

I have to admit I have always thought of Harper as a little slower off the mark than other publishers but you would have to reassess that image based on their blog efforts to date.

Impressed,
Eoin

Authonomy kicks into overdrive

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Eoin Purcell

Authonomy Ranks both Books and Backers!
I have a lot more to come on this, and bizarrely my blog review will touch on it later today but the news is big enough to mention on its own.

FroM The Blog.

It will be interesting to see how I do versus their editorial board and also how the landscape reacts to these new ranking systems.

Intrigued and somewhat impressed,
Eoin

Pretty much the whole Bookrabbit team join The Book Depository

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Eoin Purcell

What a coup

This is news by anyone’s standard:
The Book Depository has hired former BookRabbit managing director Kieron Smith as its new m.d. and employed the six other BookRabbit employees made redundant from the retailer last month as it looks to expand.

AND

Will Jones, BookRabbit’s former IT director, has been appointed The Book Depository’s IT director; BookRabbit’s former design director Kwen Wan has been employed as design director; Steve Potter, commercial trading manager at BookRabbit, has also joined The Book Depository as commercial trading manager.

The Book Depository has also hired BookRabbit’s developers Tony Dillon, Rob Johnson and Jason Merry.

THE STORY.

Random’s random blogging

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Eoin Purcell

First the good news
Random House surprised me a little. They have what look like decent title based blogsites:

    Blood River
    The Gods That Failed
    The Book of Surfing


But the bad news follows on quickly
But all three lack a little something. They don’t feel like really interactive blogs designed to build a conversation. They feel more like marketing efforts.

And their Sophie Kinsella forum feels the same too. It’s not heavily used for one and seems to suffer from a lack of attention

They do have a huge list of links to authors sites. They also have a ton of mini-sites. Most of them slightly dull and a little wasteful to my mind.

Where are they at?
Still, there is enormous promise here. The sheer volume of digital output here is mind blowing. There is no question that a more focused and slimline digital policy would pay dividends. And there is even a precedednt within the Random House group. As a book buying site their rbooks always impresses and I suppose as a publisher that has to be a good thing!

More importantly if all the imprints can be corralled into one digital home for selling books, might the same not be done for all their digital outreach efforts? I think they would benefit from it, at least for now.

Unlike Macmillan who appear to be really at home with blogging, what it can do and what it cannot do, Random seem a little at sea or perhaps, behind the times.

Listening to Bon Iver and loving it. Remembering the Loire valley and hating being back in Ireland so very much!
Eoin

Obama book links

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Independent Booksellers ‘Disheartened’ with Chelsea Green
Publishers Weekly.

Many independent booksellers are outraged with Chelsea Green’s decision to sell Robert Kuttner’s new book, Obama’s Challenge, by offering a discount coupon at the Democratic National Convention redeemable exclusively on Amazon.com via POD until the regular print run is available for national distribution.

And now B&N have cancelled their order
Oh the drama:

Barnes & Noble has cancelled its 10,000-copy order of Obama’s Challenge, a book by Robert Kuttner that Chelsea Green is making available early exclusively through Amazon.com. Chelsea Green president and publisher Margo Baldwin said the chain will make the book available on BN.com and will special order it, but that it will not stock it in its stores.

Oh and the Obama e-book
From The Guardian a little bit ago:
Aides say the book, Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama’s Plan to Renew America’s Promise, is meant as a political souvenir, and envisage an initial print run of 300,000. It is scheduled for release on September 9. An ebook version will be released a day earlier.