Ann M. Martin

America's favorite babysitters will come to iPads and Kindles everywhere starting next month when the first 20 books in Ann M. Martin's children's series "The Baby-sitter's Club" are released in e-book format.

The series follows a group of mainly female middle school students who create a babysitting club in which parents can call and get whichever club member is available for the time they need versus having to call eight different babysitters separately.

he idea is pretty straightforward: Release a book, create a Web site to go along with it, and, voila, you’ve got yourself a surefire marketing tool. Just putting something on the Web is no guarantee of success, however, which may be why, for many publishers, this simple formula ends up having a lot of variations. Book-companion Web sites—portals providing access to authors, blogs, online forums, games, contests and other multimedia offerings—play a significant role in the world of online book promotion. Standing at the intersection of traditional, publisher-designed marketing strategies, author-driven promotion and self-perpetuating “viral” marketing, thoughtfully planned book-companion Web sites offer

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