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Pan Macmillan has entered into an exclusive partnership with Instrumental, a digital talent discovery agency, to find "emerging digital stars of the future" and work with them to create books that will appeal to their fan bases.
The agency, which started out in the music sector, has developed TalentAI, a database which tracks every single video uploaded to the Internet on a daily basis, identifies creators with fast growing audiences and analyses the demographics of those audiences. Armed with this information, it can then find "emerging stars with the highest likelihood of future success".
Through this discovery platform, Instrumental will provide regular reports and insights about digital talent in content areas of strategic interest to Pan Macmillan, setting up "deep dives" to investigate further where there is high potential.
Instrumental will also work with Pan Macmillan to identify trending content themes online, around which books might be developed. In addition, Instrumental will be able to create lists of social media influencers who can support marketing campaigns on particular books.
Instrumental already works with Warner Music, reporting success in identifying a number of artists for them, as well as BBC Worldwide, PepsiCo, Sega and Vodafone to identify social influencers, while Pan Macmillan has experience helping social media stars to reach new audiences, for example, by signing now platinum sales record-holder Joe Wicks at a time when his social following stood at less than 100,000.
Jeremy Trevathan, publisher of adult books at Pan Macmillan, who has signed the agreement with Instrumental, commented: "I’m delighted to be working with Instrumental to source emerging social media talent. Instrumental have an enviable track record for doing this in the music industry and we are excited to be working with Conrad and his team to do the same thing for books".
Conrad Withey, c.e.o. of Instrumental, added: "We are thrilled to be entering into this deal with Pan Macmillan. Their success over the last couple of years with Joe Wicks has highlighted the potential of social talent to cross over to the mainstream and have enormous success. They are the UK’s Publisher of The Year for good reason and we hope we will be able to power future success with new authors discovered through TalentAI".