Today marks the formal debut of Odyl’s audience development platform for book publishers and authors on Facebook. The Odyl platform is the first social marketing tool designed specifically for publishers and authors, allowing them to connect and share with their readers.
While this is our first public showing, we’ve had early success working with some of the best in the industry. New York Times bestsellers including Katie Couric’s The Best Advice I Ever Got, Suze Orman’s The Money Class, and Janet Evanovich’s Smokin Seventeen; prestigious imprints such as Alfred Knopf, Atria and Little, Brown; and Big Six publishers including Random House, Penguin, and HarperCollins are all using the Odyl platform to market across fiction, non-fiction, and children’s categories alike. Our publishers and authors are using Odyl to manage millions of fans and reach well over 10 million people. For more details, you can read the press release that we issued this morning.
Suze Orman's The Money Class
Why social media and publishing? Publishing is a changing and vibrantly successful market that is moving strongly into digital and social marketing. Odyl sits at the confluence of social media’s ability to amplify word-of-mouth, and the unique connection between authors and readers that is fueled by great content. We only have to look at the success of book clubs as a small example of this phenomenon. A recent McSweeneys article reported that book clubs “can singlehandedly catapult a book from obscurity to thousands of readers.” Social media provides the catalyst for massively magnifying this effect, and publishers understand this.
At the same time, building an audience for authors and books is no small task for publishers needing to market hundreds, if not thousands, of individual titles in a given year. That’s where Odyl comes in. We’ve been developing Facebook applications since the release of their API, and our team has developed scalable Software-as-a-Service platforms since our work together at HotJobs.com in the 1990s, where we rolled out our software platform to over 10,000 customers. Publishers need that kind of massive and proven scalability, rather than time-consuming and often ineffective custom work, for successful digital marketing.
Social media is a perfect fit for the content-rich world of book publishing, which is why publishers are shifting their digital strategy to invest heavily in social marketing. Odyl not only offers the requisite rapid scale, but also provides the unique features needed specifically for publishers, including pulling in reviews from sites like Goodreads, galley giveaways, and “Like-gating” of book excerpts. Furthermore, our platform collects rich audience data specific to titles and readers, providing an invaluable resource for understanding and growing a loyal following.
Penguin
Odyl is dedicated to technology innovations that will deepen the value of social media for authors and publishers. Our current platform is just the first in a pipeline of forthcoming products, all carefully aligned with the particular needs and scale essential to the publishing industry for massively effective social marketing. Across the board, our technology will help to transform passionate followers into vocal evangelists.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be blogging here with our views, advice, data, and tips about publisher and author marketing. In the meantime, happy reading.
