Reader's Entertainment Television - Book Entertainment On A New Level

[COS Productions]

One of the hopes we have at Reader's Entertainment TV (REC TV) is to change a mindset. We hope to create an environment online that promotes books as entertainment on a level with other types of entertainment.

Historically, the book industry has competed with itself, measured success and determined trends by reviewing itself. So now "books as a form of entertainment" has become an island unto itself where there are "book people" and....other people.

Think of a word that video game players or movie goers call people who prefer to read for their entertainment. What is that word? Are readers sterotyped by others?

Books are, largely, discounted as a major form of entertainment. They are important if they are optioned and turned into movies. They are important if they make Oprah's list. They are important if they win some international prize or recognition. But, outside of that, where are books being discussed with enthusiasm and respect? Libraries. Bookstores. Within the industry itself. Amazon.com...wait! is that a bookstore or a machine? Even Amazon discounts the importance of books as they try to sell cheaper USED books on the same level as the new ones. They care about turning a buck, not about books. And for those who may not know, the sale of used books does not help the author or industry. Only Amazon and the used book seller make a profit on that. And, I'm not knocking used book stores, they have a place in our industry's Circle Of Life, but come on, Amazon is strangling even the small used book store out of business.

There are some people who are fighting this air of indifference toward books. They blog about books, they review books, they talk about books, they put links on their websites for books.

What is needed is an overall shift of the way we present books as a form of entertainment. Not just the way we present books, but the way we include them within a single industry, to a single set of buysers. We tend to only advertise toward readers. But, what happens as movies, music and games seduce readers to spending their entertainment dollars with them instead? And it happens. All the time.

I would be interested to know whether or not books suffer during summer blockbusters. Or, if books that have similar storylines as summer blockbusters do better than other books during that time.

We can't continue to look inside a single industry to compete. We need to look at what other entertainment industries are doing. We need to pull our heads out of the sand and start placing books on the same level as movies, TV, music and games.

It is, with that in mind, that REC TV hopes to start a trend of visual book entertainment. Book Trailers, fun author interviews, music videos set to book storylines, games created for books, and even original programming for comedy shows that use books in a positive way to entertain people.

The station is getting approximately 11,000 hits a day, which is a great start, but we're aiming for 100,000 hits a day. We want people to think about wanting to be entertained and going to REC TV to find out what's out there to read. We want to get people excited about being entertained and to know the source of that excitement is a book.

REC TV looks at what's going on in movies, television, music and games to determine what programming will look like. We hope to use popular entertainment trends from other industries to get people excited about books.

We now have people contacting us, asking to put filmstrips of our Genre-Staions on their own sites for content. We have booksellers asking for our videos for their own sites and linking to REC TV. There is definately an air of excitement in the industry, an air of hope, that something like this will work, that books can be brought to the front of the bus, so to speak, instead of delegated to the rear of the entertainment ride.

www.readersentertainment.tv