BookPitch.com is a Boon to Book Publishing, and a Welcomed Resource to Writers, Authors and Agents
In an effort to bring the industry up to date, the new website’s sophisticated, specially developed software allows publishers and agents to call for submissions, at the same time enabling publishers, agents and writers to offer rights to their books, proposals and projects.
Burlington, WA, June 05, 2005 --(PR.com)-- BookPitch.com, the first state-of-the-art Internet publishing portal designed to serve the global writing and book publishing community, has launched.
The website offers software and service features never before seen online or in the book publishing business, giving the industry an online full-service facilitator for the first time. Book publishing, a $30 billion business in the US alone, has brought attention to itself by conspicuously lagging behind every other entertainment business in its use of the power and reach of the Internet. In an effort to bring the industry up to date, the new website’s sophisticated, specially developed software allows publishers and agents to call for submissions, at the same time enabling publishers, agents and writers to offer rights to their books, proposals and projects.
The Founder and CEO of www.BookPitch.com is author, consultant and business marketer Patricia M. Kelley of Washington State’s Skagit Valley. For over a year Kelley has been working with software developers, designers, editors and content providers to develop a way to offer writers, agents and publishers the equivalent of a literary online dating service, “a match.com for manuscripts,” as she calls it.
An Affordable, Readable, Useful Solution
The publishing industry’s acquisitions capability has been stalled, virtually alone, back in the 1950s, BookPitch.com’s Kelley points out, even though almost every one of publishing’s design and production functions is now digital. This has remained true despite the fact that a huge percentage of publishing people are Internet users, the amount of time all Americans spend on the Internet has doubled in five years, and every other entertainment industry has been radically transformed by its online presence.
In developing www.BookPitch.com as a solution, two of Kelley’s major aims for the site have been realized. Membership is affordable at $9.95 per month, and the site is not littered with advertising. Instead, Kelley has designed the site to resemble a book industry convention: Advertisers and suppliers gather in the Vendors’ Tent, where the respected 60-year-old industry bible, Writers Digest, has signed on as the first advertiser.
Such an accessible, interactive online mechanism as BookPitch.com offers would mean fewer book proposals stuck on desks, fewer unanswered phone calls and smaller slush piles, answering some of book publishing’s most pressing problems and addressing the business’s most frequent complaints.
“Proposals should lead to marriage, after all,” Kelley says. “And BookPitch.com is more than happy to be the matchmaker.”
Starting Right Off With an Industry Breakthrough
Publishing’s first Podcasts are scheduled to be seen immediately on www.BookPitch.com, with interviews conducted at the June 3 Book Expo’05 in New York City. Vlogs—the new video generation of blogs—will be next, and so will moblogs, mobile video blogs and iTV (Internet TV). As the fast-breeding new technologies produce new communications possibilities, they will be seen on BookPitch.com.
The site’s initial iTV plans are already in place. A collaboration with San Francisco cable TV host and author Kathy Cordova will soon give BookPitch.com members online access to videotaped interviews with best-selling authors.
BookPitch.com’s Exclusive Features
Other BookPitch.com features include Deal Talk, a deal-reporting database; a full-featured jobs board with resume-maker; exclusive industry-specific eCards; personal blogs for every member; a BookPitch.com email address for members and forums, with columnists reporting exclusively from inside the industry.
BookPitch.com subjects range widely and will always offer color and variety. The site focuses strongly on the increasingly influential independent houses, while discovering the latest “Hit Lit”-- black writing with street cred. There are exclusive national and global reports on such topics as literary agents hiring a press agent, and an insider’s report about Hollywood’s take on graphic novels and cartoons.
BookPitch.com will happily provoke controversy on historical as well as current subjects.
Soon on www.BookPitch.com, iconoclastic Irish journalist Emmet Cole, currently living in Texas, takes on a world-class literary icon in his column, “This Side of the Pyrenees.” Cole says Jane Austen was published only because “the truly unruly women writers” of her time were considered too politically incorrect. Austen produced works where romance is divorced from love, he says, wondering if she doesn’t ultimately bear responsibility for the works of Barbara Cartland. Cole invites responses, which will result in exactly the kind of lively exchange for which the site was designed.
BookPitch.com’s columnists and writers represent a wide range of cultures, genres and interests. The site is already the home for several African American writers and columnists, who will be joined shortly by Hispanic and Asian contributors. All markets and genres will eventually be represented on the site.
Even the unique BookPitch.com Horoscope is custom-written for the book trade by an astrologer who is also a bookseller and publishing consultant.
BookPitch.com is a division of Pitch Portals, LLC and is privately held. The mailing address is P.O. Box 969, Burlington, WA 98233, and the corporate phone number is 360-542-8304. Visit www.BookPitch.com today.
Contact and Interviews:
Patricia Kelley, CEO & Founder
360-542-8304
pkelley@BookPitch.com
30-day journalist passes available upon request
###
The website offers software and service features never before seen online or in the book publishing business, giving the industry an online full-service facilitator for the first time. Book publishing, a $30 billion business in the US alone, has brought attention to itself by conspicuously lagging behind every other entertainment business in its use of the power and reach of the Internet. In an effort to bring the industry up to date, the new website’s sophisticated, specially developed software allows publishers and agents to call for submissions, at the same time enabling publishers, agents and writers to offer rights to their books, proposals and projects.
The Founder and CEO of www.BookPitch.com is author, consultant and business marketer Patricia M. Kelley of Washington State’s Skagit Valley. For over a year Kelley has been working with software developers, designers, editors and content providers to develop a way to offer writers, agents and publishers the equivalent of a literary online dating service, “a match.com for manuscripts,” as she calls it.
An Affordable, Readable, Useful Solution
The publishing industry’s acquisitions capability has been stalled, virtually alone, back in the 1950s, BookPitch.com’s Kelley points out, even though almost every one of publishing’s design and production functions is now digital. This has remained true despite the fact that a huge percentage of publishing people are Internet users, the amount of time all Americans spend on the Internet has doubled in five years, and every other entertainment industry has been radically transformed by its online presence.
In developing www.BookPitch.com as a solution, two of Kelley’s major aims for the site have been realized. Membership is affordable at $9.95 per month, and the site is not littered with advertising. Instead, Kelley has designed the site to resemble a book industry convention: Advertisers and suppliers gather in the Vendors’ Tent, where the respected 60-year-old industry bible, Writers Digest, has signed on as the first advertiser.
Such an accessible, interactive online mechanism as BookPitch.com offers would mean fewer book proposals stuck on desks, fewer unanswered phone calls and smaller slush piles, answering some of book publishing’s most pressing problems and addressing the business’s most frequent complaints.
“Proposals should lead to marriage, after all,” Kelley says. “And BookPitch.com is more than happy to be the matchmaker.”
Starting Right Off With an Industry Breakthrough
Publishing’s first Podcasts are scheduled to be seen immediately on www.BookPitch.com, with interviews conducted at the June 3 Book Expo’05 in New York City. Vlogs—the new video generation of blogs—will be next, and so will moblogs, mobile video blogs and iTV (Internet TV). As the fast-breeding new technologies produce new communications possibilities, they will be seen on BookPitch.com.
The site’s initial iTV plans are already in place. A collaboration with San Francisco cable TV host and author Kathy Cordova will soon give BookPitch.com members online access to videotaped interviews with best-selling authors.
BookPitch.com’s Exclusive Features
Other BookPitch.com features include Deal Talk, a deal-reporting database; a full-featured jobs board with resume-maker; exclusive industry-specific eCards; personal blogs for every member; a BookPitch.com email address for members and forums, with columnists reporting exclusively from inside the industry.
BookPitch.com subjects range widely and will always offer color and variety. The site focuses strongly on the increasingly influential independent houses, while discovering the latest “Hit Lit”-- black writing with street cred. There are exclusive national and global reports on such topics as literary agents hiring a press agent, and an insider’s report about Hollywood’s take on graphic novels and cartoons.
BookPitch.com will happily provoke controversy on historical as well as current subjects.
Soon on www.BookPitch.com, iconoclastic Irish journalist Emmet Cole, currently living in Texas, takes on a world-class literary icon in his column, “This Side of the Pyrenees.” Cole says Jane Austen was published only because “the truly unruly women writers” of her time were considered too politically incorrect. Austen produced works where romance is divorced from love, he says, wondering if she doesn’t ultimately bear responsibility for the works of Barbara Cartland. Cole invites responses, which will result in exactly the kind of lively exchange for which the site was designed.
BookPitch.com’s columnists and writers represent a wide range of cultures, genres and interests. The site is already the home for several African American writers and columnists, who will be joined shortly by Hispanic and Asian contributors. All markets and genres will eventually be represented on the site.
Even the unique BookPitch.com Horoscope is custom-written for the book trade by an astrologer who is also a bookseller and publishing consultant.
BookPitch.com is a division of Pitch Portals, LLC and is privately held. The mailing address is P.O. Box 969, Burlington, WA 98233, and the corporate phone number is 360-542-8304. Visit www.BookPitch.com today.
Contact and Interviews:
Patricia Kelley, CEO & Founder
360-542-8304
pkelley@BookPitch.com
30-day journalist passes available upon request
###