As readers have come to expect much more from publishers’ websites than a simple presentation of authors and books, publishers--and, increasingly, imprints within publishing houses--have begun creating sites that go beyond what is essentially an online catalog. Imprint sites are becoming community hubs, drawing readers in with original content and features that play up the social network aspects of today’s web. So was John Schoenfelder, lead editor of Little, Brown’s suspense fiction imprint Mulholland Books, inspired by any such sites when he was helping conceptualize MulhollandBooks.com? Not quite. “My model was Vanity Fair magazine,” Schoenfelder says. He envisioned a site with “exquisite photography, often skewed towards an aspirational bent. Making things exotic and beyond the everyday. Telling us about eerie things around corners, the mansion that’s behind the locked gate. Articles that take us inside the process.”
For MulhollandBooks.com, which launched last August and now gets about 3,000 page views a day, aspirational means original fiction and essays, serialized novels, and Q&As with authors, all presented in a slick package. For instance, a novel that’s being serialized now, The Black Lens by Ken Bruen, is accompanied by art by acclaimed artist Jonathan Santlofer. There’s a heavy dose of Hollywood on the site, too (the imprint does have a namesake, after all), with interviews with screenwriters, as well as content shared with the site PopcornFiction.com, which Mulholland took over recently and features weekly pulp-oriented short stories by Hollywood screenwriters, edited by Derek Haas.
Schoenfelder says MulhollandBooks.com “has the functionality of an online magazine. A lot of blogs are messy and haphazard. We wanted to have a strong design element and present finished pieces, not just a sort of slapdash commentary.”
So far, MulhollandBooks.com has featured posts on topics relating to suspense fiction by Nick Tosches, Shane Salerno and Don Winslow, Nelson DeMille, Brad Meltzer, Joe Lansdale, George Pelecanos, Alan Glynn, Tom Piccirilli, Megan Abbott, Charles Ardai, Paul Hoffman, Laura Lippman, Josh Bazell, Jason Pinter, and other writers. Posts have covered “Why Crime Writers are the Smokers of the Literary World,” “70’s Paranoia Thrillers and Why We Need Them Now More Than Ever,” “The Craziest, Trashiest Books I’ve Ever Read, ” “A Definition of Noir,” and “Tips for Budding Crime Writers,” among many other topics. Most of the articles that Mulholland has published on the site have not been by Mulholland or even Little, Brown authors; writers whose books have been published by Random House, St. Martin’s, Penguin, and Knopf have all contributed to the site.
Aside from the original content, there’s also a significant social aspect. In late October, Mulholland launched a system whereby readers who register for the site, create a profile page, and then comment on posts, tweet about Mulholland, talk about Mulholland on Facebook, or blog about it, get “badges” (themed icons) on their Mulholland Books profile page. Soon, Mulholland will launch an area where readers can upload their own photos of mystery and suspense authors onto the site.
Miriam Parker, marketing director of Mulholland Books, says, “The idea of the site is that it’s a community. We want people to come and find amazing content on a daily basis, but also interact with the site.” Parker noted, “It’s more than just a place to promote our books.”
