Anthony Policastro, a former business analyst at self-publishing vendor Lulu.com, has launched the Outer Banks Publishing Group, a new publishing venture that will focus on digital publishing and the use of social media to build an audience for POD print releases.Outer Banks Publishing offers a different model than Lulu.com. Policastro said OBP is not a self-publishing vendor like Lulu, but a hybrid publishing model that combines selective editorial content with new media publishing and promoting platforms. Policastro said he solicits manuscripts like a traditional publisher and is selective about what he publishes. However, OBP does not offer advances. Instead, Policastro says he offers writers the chance to publish their books in e-book format and his experience and expertise in using a wide variety of social media and viral marketing strategies and technologies to promote and market the book online.His plan is to publish books initially in e-book format; create buzz on the Internet through social media and then move to POD print publication when the initial e-book edition has “proven itself” by generating digital book sales. Outer Banks, Policastro said, will show its authors how to create a significant web presence with blog tours, web sites, blogs and web optimization.”A former magazine editor and blogger as well as a novelist—he has self-pubbed two novels of his own through Outer Banks—Politcastro said he is about to publish an updated edition of Martin Brossman’s Social Media and Online Resource Directory for Business, and is currently considering several manuscripts for publication.According to Politcastro, “The publishing industry is moving too slow to adapt these new technologies,” and that Outer Banks is “bridging the gap between authors and publishers and getting more authors in print.”
Outer Banks and my New Street Communications are both aimed at bridging the same gap, although at New Street we'll make digital and POD editions available simultaneously. We'll also focus less on over-the-transom manuscripts and more on titles developed and commissioned in-house. Plus New Street is exclusively nonfiction.
