Bookish, the fledgling industry wide digital platform for readers backed by Penguin, Hachette Book Group and Simon & Schuster, has appointed Caroline Marks CEO, replacing Paulo Lemgruber who has left the company. Announced in May, Bookish is still under development and while Lemgruber had hoped to launch around Labor Day, Marks will evaluate a timetable for going live.
Marks joins Bookish from Meredith where she was the first general manager of the company’s digital Parents and Lifestyle platforms, overseeing strategy and development for properties including parents.com and divinecaroline.com, as well as social/lifestyle content for Meredith. Prior to joining Meredith, Marks was the founding general manager for The Daily Beast.
Bookish's goal is to create a book recommendation site thay will help consumers discover books as shelf space at bookstores shrinks and the mainstream media devotes less coverage to books. The three founding publishers hope that by combining resources, and partnering with AOL Huffington Post, they can drive more traffic to Bookish than they have been able to do at their individual sites. The three houses had planned to add more publishers to Bookish, but no additional agreements have been announced.
