Press Release: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Enhances Young Adult Ebooks Through Immersive Music Soundtracks with Booktrack Technology Platform

NEW YORK — July 21, 2016 — Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, a division of Hachette Book Group, and reading technology pioneer Booktrack (www.booktrack.com) launch a new generation of ebooks with an industry-first partnership to bring soundtracks to young adult novellas. The collaboration offers YA readers an innovative new way to experience their favorite stories through immersive, synchronized movie-style soundtracks for popular ebooks. Popular novellas by bestselling YA authors—such as Libba Bray, Laini Taylor, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Jennifer E. Smith, and Rebecca Serle—will be made available on Little, Brown’s Booktrack page (www.booktrack.com/hachette) throughout the summer, with a regular monthly stream of new releases to come.

“Hachette Book Group has always been a leader in the publishing industry and is once again ahead of the curve by leveraging Booktrack’s technology, harnessing its unlimited creative potential for authors to deliver an immersive new experience to their readers,” said Paul Cameron, CEO and cofounder of Booktrack. “The soundtracks add a totally immersive, enhanced experience to the amazing Hachette titles we’ll be offering in our library.”

“Booktrack is doing exciting things in the digital space,” said Tina McIntyre, Senior Executive Director, Content Development, at Hachette Book Group. “We are eager to have these newly imagined digital versions of original titles available. We expect they will add an extra layer of reading enjoyment for current fans, while bringing a whole new audience to the titles to experience the joy of reading and listening together!”

Booktrack’s summer launch includes a selection of popular titles from the publisher’s digital original imprint, NOVL:

• BEAUTIFUL CREATURES: THE UNTOLD STORIES, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, are six novellas from the Beautiful Creatures world that allow readers to revisit favorite characters and venture to worlds beyond the series, which has been translated into 39 languages and was made into a feature film by Warner Brothers in 2013. THE MORTAL HEART, THE SEER’S SPREAD, DREAM DARK, and BEFORE THE CLAIMING are now available on Booktrack. A GATLIN WEDDING and DANGEROUS DREAM will release on August 8th.
• IT'S JUST A JUMP TO THE LEFT, an original short story by Libba Bray, the bestselling author of THE DIVINERS and LAIR OF DREAMS, will be available on Booktrack on August 15th.
• SECRETS & LIES, a duo of short stories by Kody Keplinger, will be available on Booktrack on August 8th. Keplinger’s debut novel THE DUFF was a major motion picture and a New York Times and USA Today bestseller.
  HAPPY AGAIN, now available on Booktrack, brings Jennifer E. Smith's readers back into the world of two of her beloved characters from THIS IS WHAT HAPPY LOOKS LIKE. Jennifer E. Smith is a fan favorite in the young adult romance genre. Her novel THE STATISTICAL PROBABILITY OF LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT is currently in development to become a major motion picture starring Hailee Steinfeld.
• LOCKED, available on Booktrack on August 15th, is a critical companion to any reader who loves Rebecca Serle's FAMOUS IN LOVE series. LOCKED is the fictional book series that launches the main character's film career in FAMOUS IN LOVE, which is currently in development to become a TV series starring Bella Thorne on ABC's new Freeform channel.
• NIGHT OF CAKE & PUPPETS brings to life a night only hinted at in Laini Taylor’s DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE trilogy—the magical first date of fan favorites Zuzana and Mik—which will be available on Booktrack on August 8th. Taylor’s series topped the bestseller charts and received accolades from Kirkus Reviews, YALSA, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and the Junior Library Guild.

Booktrack will also release soundtracks for digital originals by Jennifer Rush, Emily Lloyd-Jones, Kendall Kulper, Kate Elliot, and Virginia Boecker throughout the summer.

About Booktrack
Booktrack is an industry-leading global technology company that synchronizes movie-style soundtracks and ambient audio to eBooks. Music and ambient audio are automatically paced to an individual’s reading speed and synchronized to complement and enhance the story while a person reads. Booktrack is proven to increase comprehension by 17 percent, retention by 30 percent, and reading satisfaction by 35 percent.  More than 3 million readers and writers worldwide enjoy instant access to thousands of stories. Booktrack offers more than 16,000 titles in 40 different languages, across all genres of reading.

Backed by investors including Peter Thiel and Weta Digital, Booktrack is a disruptive force in the publishing and audio world, equivalent to how the introduction of sound transformed the experience of film forever. The Booktrack application is available from www.booktrack.com and in the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Google Chrome’s Web Store. To hear about new titles and special announcements, follow Booktrack on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

About Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers is a division of Hachette Book Group, a leading trade publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre (a Lagardère company), the third-largest trade and educational publisher in the world. HBG is made up of eight publishing groups: Little, Brown and Company; Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Grand Central Publishing; Perseus Books; Orbit; Hachette Books; Hachette Nashville; and Hachette Audio.