BookTour.com co-founder Kevin Smokler has been named vice president of marketing at Byliner.
Smokler will be responsible for overseeing marketing initiatives, social media projects, and community management at the new nonfiction site. Smokler previously served as CEO of BookTour.com. That site offers tools and services for authors to promote their books and for readers to have access to the authors.
Smokler had this statement in the press release: “Four of my great loves–reading, journalism, publishing and technology–all showed up in one job. How often does that happen?”
Byliner.com will formally launch in late May. The site will offer nonfiction authors and readers the chance to form a community by allowing for personalized recommendations, social bookmarking and aggregated discussion. Byliner also runs Byliner Originals, a distribution platform which publishes nonfiction pieces that can be read in a single sitting.
Byliner Originals has published two titles thus far. The first piece came from Jon Krauker whose title, Three Cups of Deceit, was released in the wake of the Greg Mortenson scandal. The second came from William T. Vollmann who authored Into the Forbidden Zone, a piece which explores life in Japan in the midst of its struggle to rebuild following hits from natural disasters.