Press Release: Simon & Schuster Launches Books Section With Social Media Platform Milq

New York / Toronto - Milq (milq.com and Milq on the App Store) is partnering with Simon & Schuster on the launch of Books as a new content category for its culture sharing app and site. Starting today, users can share audio and video around their favorite books on Milq, organizing them into collaborative, interactive playlists called Beads.

Simon & Schuster joins Milq as the exclusive book publisher partner for the launch. Numerous Simon & Schuster authors are starting Beads around topics tied to their writing:

• Walter Isaacson, acclaimed biographer and author of Steve Jobs, CEO of the Aspen Institute and former CNN chairman and managing editor of Time magazine, author of the forthcoming book The Innovators, (on sale: October 7) has started a Bead titled "Great Digital Innovations," kicking it off with vintage footage of SpaceWar!, the world's first video game created at MIT in 1962, as well as footage of "The Mother of All Demos," a 1968 technology demonstration that Isaacson claims "remains unchallenged, even by recent Apple product launches."
• Anna Todd, author of After-read over 1 billion times on Wattpad and now to be published by Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books on October 21 -has created a Bead inviting fans to share songs they feel resonate with the book, adding to the "Soundtrack to After."
• Other Simon & Schuster authors who have created Beads for launch include Kresley Cole, Becca Fitzpatrick, Jenny Han and Christina Lauren.
• Further Simon & Schuster Beads will include their authors' responses to prompts like "Books That Changed My Life" and "What Are You Reading?"
• Simon & Schuster's "Off the Shelf" blog for backlist books will also create several Beads to build social engagement in line with its thematic approach to book discovery.

"Milq is an exciting new and wholly original forum that will enable authors and readers to connect in a way that extends well beyond the previous limits of author-reader interaction," says Ellie Hirschhorn, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer for Simon & Schuster. "For some time now we have avidly pursued new methods to satisfy the seemingly insatiable public appetite to learn more about the likes, interests and pursuits of their favorite authors: Milq can fulfill that role by letting authors share their enthusiasms with their readers on a social spectrum that ranges from expert and curator to friend and fan."