Hachette US adds titles to mobile platform Tapas Media

Hachette Book Group has signed a new deal in the US with online mobile platform Tapas Media.

Tapas will be releasing several titles by Hachette, which include thriller Underground Airlines by Ben Winters, Dan Lyons’ "hilarious" memoir Disrupted: My Misadventures in the Start-Up Bubble, and Peter Brown’s "heartwarming" middle grade novel, The Wild Robot.

Tapas is an app that markets a combination of free comics and paid book titles in the US. Readers are able to sample portions of stories then pay as they read episode-by-episode. Readers also have the opportunity to purchase the entire book at any time. The Tapas web platform reaches over one million active users monthly, according to a company spokesperson.

Adrienne Horsley, vice president of content at Tapas Media, said: "We couldn’t be more thrilled with the decision by Hachette to support our growing platform. The addition of these titles to the Tapas library is proof positive of the changing attitudes and landscape for modern and millennial readers. To see such a forward-thinking and proactive move by a major US publisher reinforces our belief at Tapas Media that there is still room for innovation in the publishing world and this is exactly where the Tapas platform comes into play.”             

Tina McIntyre, senior executive director of content development at Hachette, added: “We have been watching closely the trend toward mobile reading rise in the past few years and have been very interested in finding ways to reach that emerging customer. We are happy to be providing our authors a new venue for their books to be discovered via the Tapas platform and are excited to watch as Tapas Media becomes a market leader in mobile reading here in the US.”