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