March of the Penguin ... the new editor's
blog
Two of the giants of the publishing world stirred this week, as Penguin began an editor's blog and HarperCollins launched a new feature on their website, Browse Inside.
HarperCollins have wheeled out their big guns for the launch with sections of books from Isabel Allende, Paulo Coelho, Michael Crichton and others, available to navigate through page by page. Plans are afoot to cover "all books globally over the next year", with Browse Inside pages available directly through partner sites and registered HarperCollins members getting "expanded access and exclusive value added content."
This follows a "contemporary" redesign of harpercollins.com, with new author and book pages and a section on the front page displaying what users have been browsing.
"We want to reach consumers wherever they are, however they wish to experience our authors and their words," says Jane Friedman, president and CEO of HarperCollins, stressing her mission to "be a true 21st-century publisher", to take the lead "on the digital front" and to "fulfil consumer and marketplace demands while, first and foremost, protecting our authors' copyrights".
In one sense it's nothing new - the image quality compares unfavourably with Amazon's Search Inside feature that HarperCollins has already signed up for - but in another it may mark the beginning of a new phase.
If you look again at Friedman's statement you'll notice that she's aiming at rather more than publishing books - for one thing she doesn't mention either "readers" or "books" at all. Now we are "consumers" who "experience" something "however [we] wish", be that on the web, on an iPod or between old-fashioned hard covers.
Google are clearly going to meet with some stiff resistance. She reaches for a military metaphor when she describes the digitial era as a "front", and goes on to nail her colours to the mast - "first and foremost" she's on the side of authors and their copyrights.
The new website is all about trying to connect people to the HarperCollins brand, with newsletters, email alerts and the promise of premium content for those who register.
Penguin has chosen a different strategy for its foray into the blogosphere, but the aims are just the same. The "nervous editor" Venetia Butterfield, who gamefully tries to strike an enthusiastic note, writes that it is as part of Penguin's "push into the 21st century" that she "has been nominated to be the voice (or fingers) of Penguin on the World Wide Web".
She calls for readers to get involved, adding comments and asking questions. "Penguin wants to open up this world to anyone," she explains, "to give everyone a little flavour of what's behind the books."
But does anybody outside the industry give two hoots about who publishes their favourite authors? Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't it the direct contact with the words on the page that makes reading so special? That's what I want to "experience".
Or maybe it's a pincer movement. Some publishers - though not yet HarperCollins - have used the web to begin cutting out bookshops. You don't need to go to a bookshop, or even onto Amazon, to pick up a Penguin. As big publishing wakes up to the potential of the web and tries to reach "customers" direct, perhaps the media are next for the chop?
