Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is helping propel the book-publishing industry into the digital age.
In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, Eisner’s Internet production studio, Vuguru, and publisher G.P. Putnam’s Sons are expected to announce today that they are teaming up to create a digital movie based on the upcoming book, “Foreign Body,” by Robin Cook – the best-selling author of medical thrillers “Coma,” “Outbreak” and “Mindbend.”
Under the deal, Vuguru, in partnership with Cyber Group Animation and online entertainment company Big Fantastic, will script out 50 two-minute Webisodes that will feature the same characters as “Foreign Body” and serve as a prequel to the book’s plot.
Set to debut on May 27, a new Webisode will air every Monday through Friday for 10 weeks, with the finale premiering on August 4 and the book hitting store shelves the next day. Advertising will be sold against the Webisodes.
“This is a whole new way to get an audience that’s not reading as much as they did in the past to get to know the characters in a novel,” Eisner said. “Hopefully they’ll get attached enough to go out and buy the book.”
Publishers have attempted to use the Internet to market books and attract new readers with little success, but G.P. Putnam president Ivan Held thinks this could be a breakthrough approach.
“One of the challenges for the industry in marketing books is how to bring in new readers,” Held said. “This concept will certainly help reach a new audience as well as hook the consumer on the book before it ever comes out.”
Not unlike how a Hollywood studio markets a movie, Held is hoping to build enough buzz to set up “Foreign Body,” which focuses on a series of unexplained deaths in foreign hospitals, for a blockbuster opening weekend. That has been the trend in book publishing for quite some time, so it’s no surprise that the publisher enlisted Vuguru, since the digital studio’s first Web series, “Prom Queen,” has been viewed by more than 15 million people.
Eisner, who came up with the idea for a prequel over dinner one evening with Cook, also has the audio and visual rights to the novel in case “Foreign Body,” like other books by Cook, ever hits the big screen.