Literary Hub aims to bring together literature on Internet

NEW YORK — Listening to Morgan Entrekin is a shot of adrenaline for anybody concerned about literary culture. “Independent publishing is the healthiest I’ve ever seen it,” said the president and publisher of Grove Atlantic, who recently passed 60 like a marathoner in the third mile.

Far from planning his retirement, he’s about to launch his most ambitious project ever: Literary Hub, a new website that attempts to bring together everything literary on the Internet. After more than a year of a planning, LitHub.com will go live on April 8, and Entrekin is determined to position his new site as salvation rather than competition for the numerous literary websites already grasping for eyeballs.

“We need this. Literary culture needs this,” he recently told the board members of the National Book Critics Circle in New York.

Billed as a “go-to daily source for all the news, ideas, and richness of contemporary literary life,” Literary Hub promises curated and original content such as interviews, profiles and essays. Grove staff members are now following more than 200 websites, looking for material that could be used.

The site is being developed in partnership with Electric Lit, whose co-founder, Andy Hunter, was also on hand at the NBCC luncheon, along with Literary Hub’s editor-in-chief, Jonny Diamond, and executive editor John Freeman.

When he started planning this project, Entrekin had hoped to get 25 partners, but he’s signed on more than 100 so far, from publishers to journals, including big names such as Knopf, FSG, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. These partners will provide content and book excerpts, possibly in exchange for ad space. Dozens of booksellers, including Amazon, have already joined or expressed interest.

Entrikin estimates that three-quarters of the material on Literary Hub will be produced by others — and he’s ready to pay for original content. Jane Smiley and Russell Banks are among the well-known writers who have submitted pieces. Additional content will come from 15 “national correspondents,” essentially stringers who work in bookstores or follow the publishing scene in their regions. The site will also include a calendar to keep track of the literary conversation across the country and periodic updates from major cities in Europe.

If that scope sounds omnivorous, Entrekin is quick to note that his site is strictly “focusing on literary books.” No genre lit — no romance, no science fiction. He wants to avoid the fate of Bookish, that much-hyped, soon-fizzled website originally backed by several major publishers. “One of the reasons that Bookish failed,” he said, “is that they tried to cover too much.”

And there’s something else you won’t find on Literary Hub: book reviews. “We’re not doing reviews,” Entrekin told the book reviewers at the NBCC luncheon. “Because this is being built by publishers, there were too many potential conflicts.”