Big Universe’s Big Aims

By John A. Sellers, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 5/8/2008

As children’s publishers try to determine the best way to feature their books and content online, Big Universe, a recently launched Web site, is offering publishers a venue to display picture books on the Internet in the hope of driving readers to buy them. Big Universe is the brainchild of Anil Hemrajani, who comes from a longtime background in software engineering and technology services. He says he started the site because “I’ve always been fascinated with children’s books.”

The site consists of two main components: the Reader software and the Author tool, as well as blogs penned by authors, parents and others. The Reader allows sitegoers to flip through picture books, much like the Web site Lookybook, which launched last November, though books on Big Universe are displayed at a larger size. Users are given the option to buy the books from publishers’ Web sites or through third-party vendors like Amazon. The low-res images from the picture books are watermarked and cannot be saved or printed.

Via the Author tool, housed in a separate section of the site from publishers’ picture books, adults and children can create their own picture books on Big Universe’s site, adding and formatting text, using clip art graphics or uploading illustrations. These digital picture books can be used either just to show friends and family or can be submitted to Big Universe for publication on the site. 

So far more than 450 picture books have been created with the Author tool; of those, 79 have been published on the site, with most authors opting for personal use. Authors whose books are published to the site must consent to an author agreement that, among its clauses, currently grants Big Universe the right of first refusal in regard to commercial exploitation of the works. The authors, however, retain the copyright to their works.

Hemrajani notes that when he incorporated Big Universe back in 2005, he had entertained the idea of developing the company as a print publisher, but ultimately reconsidered. “Because I come from a deep tech background, I knew I wanted to bring the two worlds together,” he says. In 2006, he began to meet with publishers at BEA, Bologna and other conferences about creating a site to feature their books. “I saw there was a need out there to build a community, where you could bring all these parties together on a site,” he says.

Throughout last year, Hemrajani and his team continued to build partnerships with publishers, put together a rough prototype of the Web site and launched a beta version in August. “In the children’s books world, people remember titles but rarely the author name and almost never the publisher name,” he says, noting that the virtual shops on the site offer visibility to the smaller publishers that have signed on with Big Universe. “We’re helping build the brand of a publisher.”

Indiana-based Tanglewood Press is one house with books on the site. Publisher Peggy Tierney says that Tanglewood spent “several months” debating whether or not to sign on. “Our biggest concern was whether people could freely download our books,” she says, “and would people still want a hard copy when they’re looking online for free?”

Tanglewood currently has four titles on Big Universe, though, according to Tierney, it does not currently plan to add to that number. Audrey Penn’s The Kissing Hand and its sequels are showcased in the publisher’s shop on Big Universe and can be purchased online via a link, but are not available to read on the site, because of Tanglewood’s trepidation about having these books, two of which were New York Times bestsellers, available online. “There was no way we would put The Kissing Hand up there to experiment," Tierney says.

Hemrajani admits that publishers have been hesitant about displaying full picture books. “Three out of 10 publishers are comfortable,” he says. “It gets better each year. At Bologna this year I could see the difference that one year has made.” One publisher that signed up with Big Universe after this year’s Bologna Fair is Nevada City, Calif.,-based Dawn Publications. Like Tierney at Tanglewood, Dawn co-owner Glenn Hovemann says that his “first pause” was about the security of their books on the site, but adds he was assured by Hemrajani’s explanations of the protections built into the site’s software. Hovemann likens the use of the site to that of a library, where readers might read a book a few times before buying it (or having their parents do so).

Also like Tanglewood, Dawn is only putting a few of its books on the site initially, according to Hovemann. “Even though we think this might be a good marketing strategy, we’re taking a careful attitude,” he says, adding that they will be tracking the number of visitors to Dawn’s Web site that come from the “buy” link on Big Universe, as well as getting regular reports on site traffic from Hemrajani. “If we even sell through a fifth of the ‘buy this book’ hits that’ll be great,” Hovemann says.

Big Universe currently derives its income from advertising and does not charge publishers to display their books on the site. “We don’t want to charge them,” Hemrajani says. “There’s already that resistance [to putting picture book content online].

Looking ahead, Hemrajani plans to grow the list of publishers on his site, and hopes to have 1000 books on the site by the end of the year. He’s also talking with houses about the possibility of Big Universe serving as a sort of “extended IT department” for those that may not be on the forefront of technology, in terms of marketing their books. “Right now we want to build a solid foundation, and I think the smaller publishers are helping us do that,” Hemrajani says. “We are also trying, slowly but surely, to network and talk to bigger publishers. With the smaller ones it’s just a faster process.”

In terms of site traffic, Hemrajani says Big Universe is aiming for 100,000 unique visitors per month by the end of the year and to have that number up to 1,000,000 by the end of the company’s third year. “The thing that’s really important for me personally is that both sides feel good about the relationship,” he says. “I think that it’s a great relationship: content for us, sales for them. Everybody’s happy.”