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Mashable launches books section
Digital media website Mashable is launching a new dedicated books section called MashReads in order to "create a positive space for news and reviews in which all kinds of genre readers feel included".
The new section, which the site says is "designed for the 21st century", builds on the success of Mashable's monthly social book club of the same name which was has featured live Q&A sessions with authors including BJ Novak and Malcolm Gladwell since its inception in 2013.
MashReads will now feature "more news and reviews" — including the website's picks for book of the week and graphic novel of the week, and will also be a place to read about the "flip side" of reading - writing, with features about the latest writing apps, ideal writing technology, the latest dictionary words and the importance of good grammar.
This new section is in reaction to “the old-fashioned book business" which is "hardly the picture of health", Mashable said, with "reviewers failing to understand "[readers'] general commitment to that torrent of words known as social media."
In a post on the website, MashReads editor Chris Taylor said: "21st century readers inhale [words] in the form of e-books, Kindle Singles and other digital longreads. We are crazy about audiobooks, which in the age of the app could not be more easy to download and listen to on our commutes. Literature in all its forms is more relevant to our culture than at any time in history."
He continued: "Pick up your average books section, however — should your publication even have such a thing — and you'll find them resolutely stuck in the 19th century. Book reviewers tend to write as if you, the reader, had all the time and the literary experience in the world. They fail to understand our general commitment to that torrent of words, words, words known as social media.
"Whatever guilty pleasure you like to read about we won't judge... In general we want to create a positive space for news and reviews in which all kinds of genre readers feel included."
