by Shaina Lange
From what used to be dial-up connections and AOL, to the sustained presence of Facebook and dating sites, a new way of open communication and community posting emerges everyday. With all of these technological changes in the way we interact with each other and the world around us, there was bound to be a business opportunity waiting in the midst of online media. YouTube is changing the editorial and acquisitions process, as publishers are now using YouTube to find their next big book idea and even creating imprints from the video site.
Online celebrities who begin an amateur presence through channels such as YouTube, opinion blogs and cooking sites have the power to create massive fan bases, and, through those fan bases, new business models emerge. We all remember Rebecca Black’s fleeting five minutes of fame with her YouTube video of “It’s Friday,” which quickly turned into a signed label and professional music video. While Black’s video was mainly made famous because it was parodied, her name and fame remain in our minds. Over the last few years especially, YouTube celebrities have been acquired as offline success stories, from television shows to radio gigs and now books.
YouTube sensations such as Michelle Phan, with more than seven million subscribers for her make up tutorials, are now becoming potential authors for what publishers think will be the next bestsellers. Phan’s book entitled Make Up will be released next week by Penguin’s Harmony imprint.
Taking the popularity and reach of YouTube even further, publishers and other media companies are creating imprints based on YouTube opportunities. Simon & Schuster recently created an imprint called Keywords Press, which acquires and publishes works by YouTube celebrities. Awesomeness TV, a subsidiary of DreamWorks that produces YouTube shows, also recently started its own publishing imprint called AwesomenessInk. As the COO of AwesomenessTV states, “It’s not just about the views those shows generate. It’s also about the likes and shared comments.”
Preliminary results from online-inspired books are positive. Running Press, an imprint of Perseus, released The Pointless Book by comedic video blogger Alfie Deyes last month in the U.K., and it quickly became a bestseller. Much of what is driving the book’s popularity has been Deyes’ fan base. Similar to the concept of 1,000 fans, Deyes’ five million subscribers between his three YouTube channels and blog have been posting on social media sites about the book, tremendously accelerating his print book sales.
It is interesting to see this reversal in media inspiration; What used to be a movie inspired by a book has turned into books inspired by online celebrities. As we have seen with the following behind the Twilight book and movie series, as well as the entire Harry Potter enterprise, younger generations have more of a tendency towards cult-like following and subscriptions. It is these followings that publishers plan to use as a major marketing and sales opportunity. Let’s just hope that they last longer than Rebecca Black’s music video.
Original Article: “From YouTube Stars, Literary Lions” by Jeffrey Trachtenberg and Rolfe Winkler, The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/articles/from-youtube-stars-literary-lions-1413150001#livefyre-comment
From what used to be dial-up connections and AOL, to the sustained presence of Facebook and dating sites, a new way of open communication and community posting emerges everyday. With all of these technological changes in the way we interact with each other and the world around us, there was bound to be a business opportunity waiting in the midst of online media. YouTube is changing the editorial and acquisitions process, as publishers are now using YouTube to find their next big book idea and even creating imprints from the video site.
Online celebrities who begin an amateur presence through channels such as YouTube, opinion blogs and cooking sites have the power to create massive fan bases, and, through those fan bases, new business models emerge. We all remember Rebecca Black’s fleeting five minutes of fame with her YouTube video of “It’s Friday,” which quickly turned into a signed label and professional music video. While Black’s video was mainly made famous because it was parodied, her name and fame remain in our minds. Over the last few years especially, YouTube celebrities have been acquired as offline success stories, from television shows to radio gigs and now books.
YouTube sensations such as Michelle Phan, with more than seven million subscribers for her make up tutorials, are now becoming potential authors for what publishers think will be the next bestsellers. Phan’s book entitled Make Up will be released next week by Penguin’s Harmony imprint.
Taking the popularity and reach of YouTube even further, publishers and other media companies are creating imprints based on YouTube opportunities. Simon & Schuster recently created an imprint called Keywords Press, which acquires and publishes works by YouTube celebrities. Awesomeness TV, a subsidiary of DreamWorks that produces YouTube shows, also recently started its own publishing imprint called AwesomenessInk. As the COO of AwesomenessTV states, “It’s not just about the views those shows generate. It’s also about the likes and shared comments.”
Preliminary results from online-inspired books are positive. Running Press, an imprint of Perseus, released The Pointless Book by comedic video blogger Alfie Deyes last month in the U.K., and it quickly became a bestseller. Much of what is driving the book’s popularity has been Deyes’ fan base. Similar to the concept of 1,000 fans, Deyes’ five million subscribers between his three YouTube channels and blog have been posting on social media sites about the book, tremendously accelerating his print book sales.
It is interesting to see this reversal in media inspiration; What used to be a movie inspired by a book has turned into books inspired by online celebrities. As we have seen with the following behind the Twilight book and movie series, as well as the entire Harry Potter enterprise, younger generations have more of a tendency towards cult-like following and subscriptions. It is these followings that publishers plan to use as a major marketing and sales opportunity. Let’s just hope that they last longer than Rebecca Black’s music video.
Original Article: “From YouTube Stars, Literary Lions” by Jeffrey Trachtenberg and Rolfe Winkler, The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/articles/from-youtube-stars-literary-lions-1413150001#livefyre-comment
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