Another vision of the future of books

Many publishers are still rearranging the deck chairs as the ship starts to sink slowly, but HarperStudio, a newish imprint of HarperCollins, is experimenting to find new ways to do business and find customers. They publish two books per month and pay no advances but do a 50-50 profit share with authors.

 Julia Cheiffetz is an editor there and she told Fast Company magazine about some of their activities:

 “At HarperStudio, there’s an R&D element to what we’re doing. For instance, we gave all of our authors Flip cameras and asked them to start video blogging, opening up their writing process and cultivating an audience as soon as a book is acquired. We’re looking at multimedia packaging…with each project we think about what kind of experimentation is appropriate.”

 Of course you can think the same way if you’re self-publishing or if your book is published by a more traditional company—as long as you’re willing to do the work yourself. For inspiration, have a look at their YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/TheHarperStudio