Penguin Group USA Launches Writing Community Called Book Country

Posted on April 26, 2011

The New York Times reports Penguin Group USA has launched a writing community called Book Country for writers of genre fiction. The site lets writers post work and receive critiques from other writers. However, writers can not post work until they have provided three peer reviews of the submitted work by other writers.

The New York Times says Book Country will expand to include a fee-based self-publishing service later this year. The books would be self-published by Book Country, not Penguin. Molly Barton, the director of business development for Penguin, is the president of Book Country.

In some ways the new book community sounds similar to the iPublish site launched ten years ago by AOL Time Warner in 2001. AOL Time Warner later shut down iPublish that same year.