Hachette Book Group Announces a New Facebook App: ChapterShare

New York, NY, May 23, 2012—Michael Pietsch, Publisher of Little, Brown and Company and Executive Vice President of Hachette Book Group, announces the launch of ChapterShare, a new Facebook application designed to make the sharing of book excerpts a highly social experience.

The app debuts today with exclusive excerpts from the opening chapters from James Patterson’s forthcoming novel NYPD Red (October 8/Little, Brown and Company) and Michael Connelly’s The Black Box (November 26/Little, Brown and Company).

ChapterShare creates a unique seamless, high-quality reading experience within Facebook. Using it, Hachette’s publishing divisions and authors will be able to post chapters from a forthcoming novel on their Facebook page. In addition to reading the excerpt, readers can then instantly preorder the book and share a link to the sample chapters with all their friends on Facebook.

ChapterShare is a powerful marketing tool that makes reading an interactive and sharable activity. Existing platforms are not easy to integrate into Facebook and often demand access to a user’s private information. ChapterShare is also sophisticated in terms of technology. It is fed by the Hachette Digital Platform, a system designed to manage content on apps and websites and that integrates with Facebook’s API.

Hachette Book Group Chief Operating Officer Ken Michaels said, “Publishing is evolving from a B2B business to a B2C business, and apps like ChapterShare allow us to connect directly with consumers. Publishers need to become application developers in order to connect writers and readers more closely. We saw a need for an application that could unlock more of Facebook’s power for writers and used our unique publishing expertise and systems to build it.”

Michael Pietsch added, “I’ve been dreaming of this application for the past year. Word of mouth remains the greatest influence on book purchases, and ChapterShare was created to make Facebook an even more effective way for readers to let their friends know, instantly, about writers they love and great books that are coming.”