Movellas looks to publish community's stories

Movellas is actively looking to find more books written by community members that it can take to the market, c.e.o. Joe Cohen told the FutureBook Conference today (14th November).

Addressing a panel on the long-term role of social media in publishing, Cohen spoke about the community that had developed around writing site Movellas, with 300,000 active users. Around half of users who go to the site to create stories write fan fiction, with the other half producing genre fiction. Cohen described how Movellas approached the author of the site’s most popular story and repackaged the title to sell on Amazon, with “very encouraging” early sales.

Cohen said: “The early results with publishing are promising. We always knew there was a huge amount of talent out there, and one of our goals has always been to help find it and get it recognised.”

Other speakers on the panel emphasised the idea of creation as key to driving success on social media platforms.

Rachel Fershleiser, director of publisher outreach at blogging platform Tumblr highlighted how serious engagement and activity was key to building relationships, rather than passively observing sites. She said: “The promise of the internet is not how big it is but how specific it is. Community can be used to mean a user base, but I don’t think a community is there until people are talking to each other, and publishers have to pull up a seat at that table.”

David Ripert, head of YouTube space EMEA, agreed. “Don’t just think of YouTube as a promotional tool, it’s also a place to create content… shareable is the key thing on YouTube, remember it’s a social network.”