Publishing Industry on its last legs?
Adrienne Worthington, aka Francis O’Brien, approached Webreality recently to help promote her forthcoming novel, Sheer Bliss. The challenge for Adrienne, and all authors, is getting the message to her target market, in this case teenage girls. We felt that a conventional website would be to staid, and unlikely to engage with this market. Instead, we proposed that Adrienne penned a blog in character (her protagonist is a teenage girl called Bliss Drew, the daughter of a US filmstar). In addition, we’ve created a MySpace site, that will contain video diaries of Bliss, and access to Adrienne as an author.
The whole experience is extremely energising. Adrienne has real verve and a determination to engage with her audience. Crucially, I think it points to a sea change in the publishing industry. Traditionally, commercial realities have censored literature. Unless a book sells, it won’t get printed, but what sells is second-guessed by ultra-cautious, deluged, publishers. It’s surprising that there is still so many good things to read.
But blogging has given rise to a whole new generation of authors. This time, publishers don’t need to guess whether the blog-to-book authors will succeed - success has already been established in the blogosphere.
Blood, sweat and tea charts the life and times of Tom Reynolds, a London ambulance driver. It’s gritty, entertaining, and a straightforward lift of an existing blog (Random Acts of Reality). It’s a great book/blog, and it goes against every publisher’s instinct to hoard and protect content.
So, this has given rise to our next big idea. Today, we’ve started work on Blogmybook.com which is going to be a blog portal specifically for budding authors. We’re also building a rating system, so that when an author achieves critical success in the blogosphere, we can publish straightaway. I’m quite excited about this, and as people in the office will know, there has been a lot of arm-waving today.
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