Deanna Brown Joins Byliner as President
May 2, 2013—San Francisco—Byliner, the digital publisher and subscription reading service, today announced that Deanna Brown, former CEO of Federated Media, has joined Byliner as President. Brown brings her deep experience in digital media and publishing to the startup, which is the leading publisher in the fastest-growing segment of digital publishing.
Brown is an accomplished media executive with more than 20 years of experience, ranging from entrepreneur to Fortune 500 executive. As CEO of Federated Media, she doubled the company’s revenues and was responsible for building a network that reached 180 million unique visitors a month—outranking Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft. Prior to Federated, Brown was President of Scripps Networks Interactive, and held Vice President and General Manager titles at Yahoo and AOL. She was CEO and cofounder of Powerful Media/Inside.com, which was acquired by Primedia, and CEO and founder of Gaming Industry News, which was acquired by Ziff Davis. In 1995, Brown cofounded CondéNet, the digital division of publisher Condé Nast.
“I’m very excited to have an executive and entrepreneur as accomplished as Deanna join Byliner,” says John Tayman, Byliner’s founder and CEO. “She’s proven time and again just how skilled she is at growing companies and creating products that truly connect with readers—and that showcase world-class writing and authors. She’s an absolutely ideal fit for Byliner.”
“I really wanted to work with a startup again, using my experience in building and scaling promising new ventures, but I also wanted to be part of something I’m personally very passionate about,” says Brown. “I love the content business, and I hold great writers and their work in the highest esteem. I’m a huge reader and own five different digital readers. Byliner is a perfect fit—for both head and heart—and makes great sense at this point in my career.”
Hailed by Fast Company as “One of the 10 Most Innovative Media Companies in the World,” Byliner works directly with the world’s best writers to deliver stories to readers. The company publishes original fiction and nonfiction e-shorts by top authors, including bestsellers such as Amy Tan’s Rules for Virgins, Margaret Atwood’s Positron, Jon Krakauer’s Three Cups of Deceit, Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car, Nick Hornby’s Everyone’s Reading Bastard, Richard Russo’s Nate in Venice, and Chuck Palahniuk’sPhoenix. These e-shorts are written to be read in two hours or less, and can be purchased individually through major digital bookstores. The entire Byliner Originals library is available online to Byliner subscribers, who also get access to premium content from Byliner’s by-invitation community of writers—including thousands of rarely seen and exclusive stories from bestselling authors.
The two-year-old company has published more than 30 bestsellers, including the first e-short to reach No. 1 on the New York Times E-book Best Seller List, Elizabeth Kaye’sLifeboat No. 8. Last month, Byliner authors were honored with two of journalism’s most prestigious prizes: New York Times reporter John Branch was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for Snow Fall, which was released simultaneously in expanded form as the first in a series of New York Times / Byliner Originals. And Brian Mockenhaupt won the Michael Kelly Award for his Byliner Original The Living and the Dead, the tragic, deeply moving story of three close friends in a remote Marine encampment in Afghanistan. The Living and the Dead was also named a finalist for the 2013 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing, and novelist Jennifer Haigh’s Byliner Original The Boy Vanishes was chosen as a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction.
