Amanda Close

Penguin Random House today announced the formation of a cross-company Consumer Marketing Development and Operations Group. It will both support the dedicated title-, author- and category-marketing, and the marketing innovation within each of its U.S. publishing groups

 Lori Hettler is a passionate reader, tearing through about 80 books a year. But as a resident of a Pennsylvania town and with a preference for fiction from small publishers, she can have trouble finding new books to feed her habit.

She tried to start a book club, but there weren’t enough takers. For years she made a weekly trip to browse a bookstore 40 minutes away in a Scranton suburb.

But then she found a solution to her problem: Goodreads.com, a social media site for finding and sharing titles that has 15 million members…

  By Brian Howard Last week, following a soft-launch the week prior, Random House marched out BookScout, a Facebook app designed to link readers with books they’ll like but might not have discovered on their own. The recommendation engine draws on a user’s “likes”—both on one’s Facebook timeline and then directly through the app. Intriguingly, BookScout [...]

The post A conversation with Amanda Close about BookScout, Random House’s new discoverability app appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

Last week, following a soft-launch the week prior, Random House marched out BookScout, a Facebook app designed to link readers with books they'll like but might not have discovered on their own.

We asked Amanda Close, Senior Vice President, Digital Marketplace Development at Random House, to take us through the steps of getting an app like BookScout into the world, and how it plans to hone it going forward.