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Hachette UK is beta testing its own author and agent portal, and will launch it "fairly soon", group communications director Clare Harington has told The Bookseller.
The news comes as Hachette Book Group announced the launch of its own portal within hachettebookgroup.biz, the company’s business platform.
HBG's portal offers a self-service option that allows agents and authors to access information and resources that includes sales information for all of their titles published by HBG in all formats. Enhanced features include: a list of all of the author’s works; unit sales information; Nielsen BookScan weekly sales data; a guide for authors to HBG’s publication process; an interactive publication timeline for the 12 months pre-publication; and a tool for reporting online piracy.
Agents will also have access to the information that their author sees, as well as PDFs of their author’s royalty statements.
Hachette Book Group c.e.o. Michael Pietsch said: “I'm very pleased to be able to offer this new channel for communication and information sharing. The Portal is designed to add transparency to the publishing experience by making sales data and resources readily available and easy to use to authors and agents, our valued partners in the publishing process.”
Harington told The Bookseller Hachette UK's portal will be different, but based upon the same principles of giving authors and agents direct access to their sales.
Penguin Random House launched its UK Random House author portal in February this year, modelled on its US author portal, which launched in March 2012.
Last month, PRH reported that more than 700 authors and 75 agencies have registered for the UK author portal in the first six months.
Simon & Schuster US launched an author portal in October 2011.