Publisher launches online channels _ CEO sings

NEW YORK — It isn’t every day you get to hear a CEO sing.

Penguin Group (USA), where authors include Nora Roberts and Khaled Hosseini, has launched “From the Publisher’s Office,” an in-house network of online channels that includes video interviews and readings, audio discussions of classic literature and audio and text excerpts from new releases.

And there’s music — original music — including “Wouldn’t You Like To,” a folksy sing-along composed, played and sung by Penguin CEO David Shanks that calls out to creators everywhere: “Wouldn’t you like to write a story?/Don’t you wish that you knew how?/You could be a famous author/Listen up and find out how.”

Shanks, 62, said Tuesday that he has a background of singing and performing, whether in amateur folk groups or coming up with industry parodies for sales conferences. When Penguin president Susan Petersen Kennedy suggested he try some music for the new Internet project, Shanks was game.

“I saw that all of these people in this company were doing something extra to make this work and I just got into the spirit of it,” Shanks said. “I don’t think there are a lot of CEOs who get up and play rock ‘n’ roll and sing. But I think one of the things that makes us a successful company is that we don’t we take ourselves too seriously.”

“From the Publisher’s Office” continues an industrywide trend of trying to reach readers through the Internet, whether Facebook or Twitter, or through e-mail blasts at specific markets, such as educators or business people. At a time of declining newspaper coverage, Shanks said publishers have to experiment.

“If we don’t change, we’re going to be like the dinosaurs,” he said. “This is a way for us to stay on the curve of where book marketing is going. It’s sort of a really interesting new world. Everybody’s learning. Some of these things will work. Some of them won’t.”

Publishers have offered different opinions about the effectiveness of online promotion. During a CEO round-table at last month’s booksellers convention, John Sargent of Macmillan said that even when one of his releases became a YouTube sensation in Britain, there was little impact on sales. Shanks said Thursday that he was happy to let Sargent and others disparage Internet marketing “because that leaves more for us.”

The Penguin network www.penguin.com/thepublishersoffice features three channels and nine ongoing series of book programming. The strategy, Kennedy says, is “narrowcasting,” appealing to librarians and teachers through “Penguin Storytime,” to followers of the supernatural through “Project Paranormal” or to poetry lovers with “A Cup of Poetry.”

The Penguin Web site currently has about 325,000 unique visitors per month, according to spokesman David Zimmer.

Shanks isn’t the only Penguin executive to jump in the talent pool. A senior academic sales and marketing director, Alan Walker, will review 26 works of classic literature. Joel Fotinos, publisher of the Tarcher imprint, will host “Tarcher Talks,” a New Age series. Jeff Gomez, senior director for online consumer sales and marketing, composed theme music for a series on young adult books.

For Penguin Storytime, a featured reader will be Liz Shanks, a former children’s librarian, a frequent speaker at schools and the CEO’s wife.