Sep

Startup BiblioStar Aims to Promote Authors Via Video

It’s an understood truth in the publishing industry that every author—indie or traditionally published—is going to have to take on at least some responsibility for his own book promotion. While bigger names from some of the bigger publishers often get some help in the PR department, authors generally have a lot of work to do in order to get their books in front of audiences.

But BiblioStar, a new startup that launched today, has tapped into the popularity of online video in hopes of providing much-needed publicity for authors through film. According to the company founder, Astral Road Media founder and CEO Rich Fahle, both authors and publishers stand to gain from the publicity of an author video.

Unlike the increasingly popular book trailers, which are essentially movie trailers for a single book, BiblioStar.tv’s author videos are live discussions with the authors in a variety of settings. Fahle sees this format as being highly valuable over the entire lifetime of a book, rather than just being used as initial promotion at the book’s launch.

For now, Fahle has no revenue source for BiblioStar, but does envision lots of different outlets for income including advertising—especially book advertising from publishers—and affiliates programs. Several videos have already been produced, including some from authors Libba Bray, Gretchen Rubin, and Dennis Lahane.

Mercy Pilkington (1086 Posts)

Mercy Pilkington is a young-adult author and a teacher in a correctional facility. She does not have a single textbook in her classroom. With the top-of-the-line technology at her disposal and the low reading ability of many of her students, there’s no need for standard paper texts. Instead she relies on e-readers, iPads, desktop PCs, Polycom video conferencing equipment for virtual field trips, live streaming for science demonstrations, and text-to-speech read-aloud software to teach English and science. Within the next ten years, public school classrooms across the country are going to look a lot more like Mercy’s classroom because the educational possibilities with these kinds of technologies are limitless. Have a question? Send an email to mercypilkington@yahoo.com