It’s strap in and launch time for the three most prominent contenders in the world of author-focused websites. To wit: AuthorsOnTheWeb.com, another node on Carol Fitzgerald’s Book Report Network, expects to go live by December 11; PreviewPort.com, an author portal headed by novelist Susan Bergman, is set to roll out an e-book store, and hopes to launch its searchable author database in January; and the site from Joshua Horwitz now known as AuthorsOnline.com is gearing up for a Q1 launch next year. Here’s the latest news from each.
“We’re calling it the People magazine of authors,” says Fitzgerald of AuthorsOnTheWeb, which will lead off with an author of the month, editorial features on author-related topics (the first will be a piece based on the book About the Author), and links to author pages and other sites. The company has also signed a deal with HarperCollins to create 50 freestanding author sites, the first of which will be up in January. An author yellow pages feature is on tap, which will point to various sites (such as the one the company created for M.J. Rose at www.mjrose.com), and there are plans to promote sites via the Network’s 60,000 newsletter subscribers, not to mention the 400,000 unique visitors to the network each month. Fitzgerald says an in-house design staff will be augmented with marketing staff as well, with marketing packages available for a fee. Sites start at $300 (though that price is due to be raised) and reach the $10,000 range for deluxe author packages.
Meanwhile, PreviewPort has logged 350,000 unique visitors since the site’s launch in June, with 65,000 per month. This one’s more of a centralized collection of author pages, with 150 author sites built to date, and a calendar of literary events searchable by zip code. Plans are also in the works for the wireless world. “We’re optimizing the site to make certain kinds of information available for PDA’s,” says Bergman, and a deal with cell phone services is in the works to transmit, say, information from the site’s calendar to your phone. An International Author Index will also serve as a database containing a bio, photo, and bibliography for authors. Listings are free, and authors can currently enter information, although the index will not be fully live until next year. Eventually, the index is expected to become the “public area” for PreviewPort (and a potential rival to Bowker-like information sources), while a premium content area will be available for a subscription fee. As for e-publishing, PreviewPort has offered Authors Guild members an e-book conversion package for $300, plus a 50% royalty on net receipts.
Finally, creators of AuthorsOnline (formerly YourNextBook) have vowed to launch early next year. “We’ve been watching what everyone is doing,” says founder Joshua Horwitz, “and trying to take advantage of the fact that we haven’t launched yet to sharpen our model.” He’s signed 80 authors (among them Frank McCourt), but is now in talks with existing publishing and bookselling portals. “Standalone sites are a much tougher way to go,” he says. “We’re looking for an alliance that lets us leverage our author assets.” The company still gives authors an equity stake, and Horwitz envisions creating “value-added” e-books by plugging that “sticky” content into digital texts and potentially selling them through author-branded e-bookstores. “Merely digitizing books is not the answer,” he says. “This is the kind of material that’s going to be invaluable for e-books.”
