A look at some publisher websites

Like Brent, I started my publisher website tour over at Tor books. Tor's site is great, so much so that I've subscribed to it so I can be sure to catch all the great stuff they put out. They put out loads of content for a few different audiences, though all of those audiences are drawn from a fairly narrow selection of fantasy/sci-fi enthusiasts. One of their key virtues is that they have recognized that just because they publish books doesn't mean they should ignore other forms of the same genre, so they give plenty of news about movies and TV shows that readers of their books might like. They also provide links to those interested in more technical aspects of publishing, such as cover design. They produce somewhere around a half-dozen posts a day, so plenty of content. They have a variety of writers, from Tor employees to well-known authors. In many ways, they seem to be following the model of BoingBoing by having a number of authors and a pop-culture focus. In all, tor makes it quite clear that the focus of their site is on the web-literate sci-fi/fantasy afficionado, and they do a good job of delivering content that will keep those people returning to (or at least subscribed to) their site.

There are other sites that try to do the same sort of thing--Baen has a website that focuses on readers and potential writers, even going so far as to offer short story critiques that occasionally lead to sales in their forums, but the site feels horribly outdated--it looks like a relic of the late 90s, and is not terribly user-friendly. Del Rey's website is more modern looking, but without any of the content that makes Tor so appealing. At least both of these sites have a strong focus, probably because they are genre imprints.

Probably the worst publisher's website I visited, both in terms of design and of focus, was Penguin books' site. for starters, you have to click in two different places to even get to their main site--once to select a country, and once to tell them if you want to remember the country information you just selected. When you get to the website, it's a jumble--there are ads for vampire TV tie-ins, diet books, penguin classics, and current event-related titles right next to each other. They do seem at least to be addressing their readers primarily, but they don't seem to have a clear view of who those readers are, which seems like a major downfall to me (especially as they seem to be trying to be cutting-edge and Web 2.0, which means community, which is hard to get if you can't quite work out who you're meant to be communing with).