Culture is future » Innovation and digital

Always Further - The social Netbook

While Facebook already proposed to create your visual bookshelf to list and recommend books to all your friends, the numbers of social networks dedicated to books are increasing.

In France, Babelio exist since 2007, providing extracts, reviews, quotes, top 10 for each genre, etc. and everyone can share his reading. With more than 700 000 visits a month, Babelio is supported by different publishers as Albin Michel, Gallimard or Grasset: the more active members can be invited to comment new books in previews. At the time of an participative Internet, when Internet users have recourse to websites as tripadvisor  tripadvisor or voyage forum as well as guidebooks, publishing groups try to integrate with these new social networks to reach in a new way their readers.

In September, big American publishers - Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group et Simon & Schuste – plan to launch a new website:  bookish. They want to create an IMBd for books: a database to provide readers with a personalized experience, a place where they can find all notices, critics, news and features about authors, publisher and books. Hachette has already launched his own website, MyBoox, in order to know better his readers and to stay close to them. Some of the readers, becoming official members, can order for free all the books they want, during one year. A lot of similar websites exist, each one developing its own type of prescription.

A new way for publishers and authors to enter in this new conversation between brand and readers.

To go further 

Illustration: Ian Wilson