Simon & Schuster announced this morning that they have reached an agreement with video company TurnHere to launch a book-centric internet video channel to promote S&S authors and their new releases. The companies will produce videos with in-depth information on featured books and authors as well as sneak previews of upcoming titles. The channel, called Bookvideos.tv, will launch in early June.
“Readers have long hungered for greater contact and more information about authors,” said Sue Fleming, Vice President, Online and Consumer Marketing for the Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. “Now readers will have a way to view and share compelling content about our authors, available on a 24/7 basis. Bookvideos.tv will allow readers to easily use the internet to replicate, for the digital age, the critical and time tested word of mouth excitement that comes from talking about a good read. Working with TurnHere to tap this huge potential audience is an exciting new way of marketing for us, and we expect to find legions of new readers while at the same time giving a new experience to dedicated fans of our authors.”
The WSJ’s Jeff Trachtenberg has more on the story along with a telling observation from The Book Report’s Carol Fitzgerald: most readers don’t know which publishers actually publish their favorite authors. “They could say, ‘Why don’t you have John Grisham?'”, even though he’s published by Doubleday.