S&S to Launch Video Channel

by Lynn Andriani, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 5/8/2007

Simon & Schuster has teamed with the Internet video company TurnHere Inc. to launch a "book-centric video channel" that will promote S&S authors and their new books. Bookvideos.tv will begin in early June, and the videos will also be available at SimonSays.com, YouTube and the authors' own Web sites. Though S&S has produced videos to promote its authors in the past, the venture with TurnHere represents a stronger and more formal commitment to using video to market authors. S&S will create videos for at least 40 authors, including Mary Higgins Clark, Kathy Reichs, Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, Jennifer Weiner and Zane.

Sue Fleming, v-p of online and consumer marketing for S&S's adult publishing group, said the company is drawing more heavily on video to promote authors, based on reader feedback. She noted video's ability to "replicate, for the digital age, the critical and time tested word-of-mouth excitement that comes from talking about a good read." S&S has previously used videos to promote its books—recent examples include last year's Joy of Cooking, Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes and the Newbery-winning Higher Power of Lucky—but the partnership with TurnHere embodies its move "from a one-off to a more concerted or systematic attempt through the use of video to raise consciousness about our authors on the Web," said Adam Rothberg, of S&S's corporate communications department. One of the key ways people will find the videos will be via search engines; S&S is working on tagging all the videos so that they turn up when people search for an author on Google and other sites.

The Emeryville, Calif., TurnHere, founded in 2005, produces films for clients ranging from hotel chains and banks to restaurants, colleges and media companies, including Chronicle Books. Its videos are accessible online through its consumer site, www.turnhere.com, and through its distribution relationships with Google Earth, MSN Video, Yahoo! Video and other portals.