With over 800 million users, Facebook, in the words of Neil Baptista, has become its own universe. If Baptista has his way, the publishing industry’s portion of that universe will revolve around Odyl, a Facebook application designed to connect authors and publishers with their readers. And Odyl is already well on its way — officially launched in September, Odyl already counts among its clients publishing’s Big Six and heavy-hitters like Jane Fonda, Katie Couric, and Bret Easton Ellis. Read the full story here.
Award-winning Author JT Ellison Selects Odyl for Book Marketing on Facebook
Thriller Author More than Triples Facebook Fans in First Week
New York – Oct. 6, 2011 – Odyl (www.odyl.net), the first social marketing platform for book publishers and authors on Facebook, announced that acclaimed novelist JT Ellison is using its platform to promote her recently-launched seventh novel, “Where All the Dead Lie.” Within just one week of the book’s launch on Sept. 20, Ellison increased her Facebook fans by 250 percent.
Designed specifically to help publishers of all sizes, as well as individual authors, grow their audience and drive sales, Odyl leverages Facebook’s 800 million+ membership and the power of social discovery to amplify “social reading” and the natural sharing of great content among friends. Its features are uniquely tailored for sharing between authors and readers.
Ellison is using her Odyl-powered Facebook page to create exciting connections with her readers, offering exclusive content, excerpts, giveaways, polls, interviews, and trailers. Using Odyl’s intuitive platform, Ellison can quickly enter her latest content and appearances, giving her readers something to talk about. Ellison also uses Odyl to give her readers one-stop access on Facebook to all her content, including her blog, Twitter stream, videos and news.
“Thanks to Facebook and Odyl, readers now have unprecedented access to authors like me,” said Ellison. “Having a two-way conversation with my readers matters. Facebook is, after all, where our culture’s conversation is happening. Odyl is helping me find new ways to connect with and grow my readership. It’s the best investment I’ve ever made.”
According to Ellison, Facebook provides an alternative to book tours which can be expensive and time-consuming, and often overwhelming for shy readers. “Via Facebook, readers and I can replicate the connection of meeting in-person. I can amplify this using Odyl to offer fans exclusive giveaways, like signed copies, free short stories and insider secrets about the books.”
“Publishers care about an author’s platform and reach, as it begins to answer the difficult question ‘How many books can we sell?’” said Odyl CEO, Mike Taylor. “While many publishers participate in author marketing, most authors still have to market themselves. Until Odyl, authors have done this without tools designed specifically for their needs. Now, Odyl lets authors quickly propel their Facebook marketing to new heights in a way perfectly suited to books and readers. JT Ellison is a great example of what’s possible here.”
To read a guest blog post by JT Ellison, please visit: http://odyl.net/if-you-build-it-they-will-come/
About Odyl
Odyl is a social marketing technology company, focused on the unique needs of book publishers and authors. Odyl’s audience development platform provides a proven way for publishers – including the Big Six – and authors to find, engage and grow their audience, leveraging the reach and sharing power of Facebook. Odyl enables deep connections between readers and the authors who inspire them, and builds real-world sales. More at http://www.odyl.net and on the Odyl blog.
Xconomy: Odyl Launches Facebook Platform for Authors and Publishers
… Another Big Apple company has started up with a Facebook marketing solution—this one for the book industry. Odyl, founded by veterans of HotJobs, rolled out a software platform today that’s designed to help publishers and authors connect with readers. Full story here.
Introducing Odyl
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.
Lee Child chose Odyl to promote WORTH DYING FOR, the fifteenth book in the series.
In Lee Child’s new book, Worth Dying For, Jack Reacher is making his way to Virginia to hopefully meet the woman with the sexy voice with whom he spent much of 61 Hours conversing on the phone. You’d think that by this time, the fifteenth book in the series, Reacher has seen and experienced everything. But something happens to him in this installment that has never happened to him before.
To promote Worth Dying For, Child added a ‘Thrills’ Tab to his Facebook Fan Page. Fans can read an exclusive Excerpt of the book, and view the promotional Trailer video. Fans can also follow Lee Childs’ latest tweets without leaving Facebook. To see the full page click here.
