You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
More than 700 authors and 75 agencies have registered for Random House’s Author Portal since its launch six months ago, although it is still not available to Penguin authors.
The Author Portal opened at the end of February, offering sales data to authors and agents and subscriber access to The Bookseller, as well as—like Cambridge University Press’ Author Hub—advice and guidance for writers.
HarperCollins will join CUP and Random House in offering its own author portal, Author Direct, which is currently being built. Charlie Redmayne, HarperCollins UK c.e.o., revealed at the London Book Fair in April that the portal will offer sales data, royalty statements, tutorials and market news, among other things.
Andy Woodfield, CUP’s brand development manager, said the publisher’s hub was important because “the way readers want to engage with authors has changed. There is a demand online [from readers],” he added. “Readers want to engage with an author and not a publisher.”
The Random House portal has had 8,000 author visits in six months, with access to sales data being the site’s most popular feature. “Users can break the data down by format, sales channel and country,” said Sophie Murray, Author Portal manager. “We know from the author focus groups we conducted pre-launch that our authors want openness and transparency around their sales information, so we are delighted to be able to provide that.”
However, there is still no confirmation on when the portal will be opened to Penguin authors. Murray said: “Our ambition is to make the Author Portal available to all authors across Penguin Random House UK. We don’t have a firm date as yet.”
Random House’s Author Portal also incorporates Author Academy, which offers training sessions for authors. So far two in-person Author Academy sessions have been held, in media training and blogging, each attended by around 20 authors. Murray said: “Feedback after each session was overwhelmingly positive and we’re now looking forward to more sessions in the future.”
The most popular features of CUP’s hub, which celebrated its first birthday this summer, are sections on creating an Amazon profile page and video tutorials. CUP also has a LinkedIn page for its Author Hub, which has more than 500 members.
Woodfield said social media helped CUP’s authors find new readers and fans. He added: “Author Hub is very much a supplementary support service in addition to the more traditional methods we use to market and promote books.
“The emergence of things like blogs means the traditional way of getting your book reviewed is changing. It all comes back down to discovery. Readers can interact directly with authors [on social media]. I think there is greater curiosity from authors because social media is everywhere.”