Simon and Schuster has been on the loose lately.
In January they partner with Gather.com and Borders for a nationwide literary contest that reeked of American Idol. They framed it this way “Publisher Leverages Power of Social Media to Find America’s Next Great Writer”
Then they go ahead and Long Tail their standard author contract so that technically a book never goes out-of-print.
and now they’ve launched the ambitious BookVideos.tv. A “social media video site…where you can engage with the literary community on a whole new level.”
All the books on the BookVideos.tv website are available for sale directly from S&S. They provide you an option to buy it somewhere else but you are going to their shopping cart first.
This direct to consumer sale option combined with their desire to keep every book in print is very much tied to The Long Tail philosophy. By reducing the cost of inventory storage and distribution and utilizing the new print on demand technologies it finally becomes economically feasible to keep alive anything you have ever published!
I might have jumped the gun when I titled my post on the author contract revisions “Simon & Schuster on a Slippery Slope with New Long Tail Approach.”
Suddenly, the slope doesn’t look so slippery.