SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Wouldn’t it be great to have the best stories by Susan Orlean, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Lewis, Mary Roach, E.B. White, Mark Bowden, and hundreds of other nonfiction writers from the past 100 years available on one website? Just type in a favorite author’s name and, voila—there are the pieces you’ve read and loved, plus plenty more you’ve never seen. Now there is such a website: Byliner.com.
Byliner.com, which goes live in beta today, features virtual shelves filled with thousands of the best nonfiction magazine stories ever written. Created by Byliner Inc., the new digital publishing company that recently published the bestselling stories Three Cups of Deceit by Jon Krakauer and Into the Forbidden Zone by William T. Vollmann, Byliner.com is like the world’s biggest magazine stand—except that you can browse from the comfort of your computer, and everything is free.
Byliner.com allows easy access to 30,000 new and classic nonfiction feature articles by more than 3,000 writers—some published in the last hour, some several decades ago. The site also features deep, curated directories of more than 200 great nonfiction authors, past and present, as well as social bookmarking tools and discussion. The site goes one step further by offering personalized reading suggestions made by both the bestselling writers featured at Byliner and the site’s unique search recommendation engine. Byliner.com’s goal is to help people find, discuss, and share the best work by their favorite writers, and to discover writers they’ve not read before. In short, Byliner.com makes certain that you’ll always have something good to read.
“It's exciting to finally be able to share with readers the full Byliner.com,” says John Tayman, CEO and founder of Byliner Inc. “In the past few weeks, almost 200,000 readers downloaded or bought our first Byliner Originals, and we're thrilled that those readers and many more will now be able to discover other superb nonfiction writers through both our archives and our own published stories,” says John Tayman, CEO and founder of Byliner Inc. “We look forward to learning more about what readers will latch onto, and how they’ll engage in and help develop the Byliner community.”
Among the many features you’ll find on Byliner.com: detailed author pages for hundreds of great writers from David Foster Wallace to Caitlin Flanagan to Chuck Klosterman; reader pages full of personalized recommendations; the ability to follow your favorite writers, explore other writing from the magazines they contribute to, and buy their books; timely, curated reading lists that help make sense of the issues of the day; and the opportunity to submit and share stories you've discovered, as well as follow other readers to see what resonates with them.
Byliner.com also serves as the distribution platform for Byliner Originals, compelling nonfiction stories from the worlds of culture, sports, technology, business, adventure, and more. Byliner Originals are designed to be read in a single sitting and are published across every available digital platform; some titles are also available in audio and print-on-demand versions. Byliner's first two Originals became instant bestsellers, and Byliner has upcoming Originals by bestselling writers such as Mary Roach, Mark Bittman, Buzz Bissinger, Mimi Swartz, Anthony Swofford, and David Rakoff.
Everyone loves a good story. Byliner.com will give you thousands.
The Byliner Inc. executive team includes:
- John Tayman, founder and CEO. Tayman is an award-winning editor and writer and the author of the 2006 bestseller The Colony. A former editor and writer for Outside, Life, Business 2.0, and Men's Health, Tayman is editor-at-large for Techland, Time magazine's technology blog, and the founder of MotorMouths.com.
- Ted Barnett, COO and co-founder. Barnett is the founder and CEO of When.com, which was acquired by AOL for $225 million. A veteran of Apple Computer, he's served as vice president at Ofoto, vice president at AOL, and CEO at SuperSecret.com.
- Mark Bryant, editorial director and co-founder. Bryant is the former editor of Outside, Men’s Journal, and Play: The New York Times Sports Magazine as well as a former executive editor at HarperCollins. His magazines won numerous National Magazine Awards, and several of the stories he published were subsequently turned into bestselling books and films.
- Kevin Smokler, vice president of marketing. Smokler is the former CEO of BookTour.com and a writer, speaker and entrepreneur.
For more information or to schedule an interview about Byliner.com, please contact Marlene Saritzky at Marlene@mssassociates.com; 415-713-1241. To schedule an interview about Byliner Originals, including the company’s two new releases, I Hope Like Heck: The Selected Poems of Sarah Palin, compiled and edited by Michael Solomon, and Planet Killers by Tad Friend, both coming out on June 21, 2011, contact Clare Hertel at clare@clarehertelcommunications.com; 505-474-6783.