Launches Book.TV with Melanie Blake
OOOOO the revolutionary live-streaming video platform launch dedicated channel Book.TV
with live guest appearance from bestselling author Melanie Blake reading on International Woman’s Day, Monday 8th 10pm
Developed by the Tech leaders behind Wish.com and Tik Tok, OOOOO is the ground-breaking interactive platform where live entertainment meets shopping; an immersive social realm that presents an exhilarating and interactive live experience across a network of digital ‘tv’ channels dedicated to all interests and passions.
Monday 8th sees the launch of the dedicated channel for avid literature fans and book worms, Book.TV. To mark International Woman’s Day, at 10pm renowned author Melanie Blake will make a guest appearance with a live, intimate reading of her famously scandalous book ‘Ruthless Women’ live and direct from her home to yours. Viewers are also provided with the exclusive chance to purchase signed, limited edition copies during the live performance.
Named “the new Queen of the Bonkbuster” and the rightful heir to Jackie Collins’ crown by The Times UK, celebrity agent and Sunday Times Bestselling author Melanie Blake will launch Book.TV on OOOOO with her smash hit novel – Ruthless Women which is currently at no.4 in the UK bestseller charts. So addictive it’s been described as a “binge read,” Ruthless Women is perfect for fans of Killing Eve and The Devil Wears Prada.
Book.TV – Hear the Story, Meet the Author
Book.TV is a channel devoted to celebrating talented authors, independent bookshops and book worms, delivering a lucrative platform and much-needed boost for the UK’s publishing industry impacted by the pandemic.
Book.TV is an informative and interactive live shoppable channel with the aim to provide entertainment and education to the OOOOO community, immersing them in the world of written word and literature through live, entertaining and shoppable readings.
Book.TV provides the opportunity for established and emerging authors to perform live readings to a highly engaged, interactive crowd. At the same time, the audience can discover new talent, virtually ‘meet and greet’ their favourite authors and enjoy free live, intimate performances.
Content will also be tailored to capture different audiences, with live shows dedicated to the reading of comercial fiction, crime thrillers, YA romance, literary classics, children’s books and timeless comics hosted by the authors themselves. Live shows on he platform are currently reaching up to 10k viewers, with lots of new readers to be made every single night.
The platform is also a unique, lucrative sales channel for the author, publisher or book retailer to gain earning potential during real-time performances. Copies of the narrated book, including exclusive first editions and signed copies, will be available for purchase during the show.
What really makes the live-streamed experience on Book.TV inimitable is both viewers and performers can enjoy two-way interaction, with a cutting-edge integrated ‘tipping’ feature to further bolster earnings during the show. This feature enables fans to purchase and send virtual ‘gifts’ to the narrator, with each symbol representing a monetary value they receive post-show.
OOOOO’s mission to help people earn a living doing what they love, and to build and inspire like-minded communities. The company has also set its sights on building not-for-profit channels, with the aim being to first and foremost educate and inspire the audience. Avenues are also being explored to leverage the concept to drive fundraising efforts for charity beneficiaries.
Laura Palmer Publishing Director at Head of Zeus has said: The new Book.TV channel on OOOOO.com is a game changer for the publishing industry. Imagine if authors could directly sell books to their fans via twitter or Instagram? This is exactly what OOOOO.com offers. At a time when we need diverse retail channels more than ever, when book festivals are postponed and authors are unable to go to signings, OOOOO.com has come up with a solution that the publishing industry badly needs. Melanie Blake’s audience are digital savvy shoppers who are more likely to buy their books on their weekly supermarket shop than visit a bookshop, and as OOOOO.com is the UK’s fastest growing social media app, it has the ability to transform the way not just authors but the entire publishing industry sells books. It’s the beginning of a new digital era for book sales, and I hope as many of the publishing industry as possible tune in at 10pm on Monday 8th March to see how it works.
Melanie Blake, author of bestseller Ruthless Women says: “When I wrote Ruthless Women last March, during the first lockdown, never in a million years did I believe we’d still be in lockdown when it came out. OOOOO.com launching a new channel dedicated to books is a game changer for authors everywhere in the UK. At the moment, as an author, I can’t meet my readers or sign books. Being able to sell signed copies of my book and speak to my readers on OOOOO.com is the closest I will get to a book signing or author event in lockdown. I am beyond honoured to be the first author to launch the new books channel on OOOOO.com. Becoming a Sunday Times Bestseller has been the biggest achievement of my career as an author and now OOOOO.com has found a way for me to share this success with my readers, so I am over the moon. Anyone joining me at 10pm on Monday the 8th March is in for a wild ride as I will be reading from the juiciest parts of my new novel Ruthless Women – trust me when I say it’s not for the faint hearted!”
OOOOO Co-founder, Sam Jones, says: We are thrilled to be launching Book.TV with bestselling author Melanie Blake. The launch of Book.TV is part of our wider goal to provide educational and informative channels for the OOOOO community. Book.TV will connect the audience with the wonderful world of written word, renowned authors like Melanie and emerging talent through a unique, live and interactive experience.
The past year has resulted in many of us adopting a slower pace of life, spending more time indoors than ever and filling the time once dedicated to socialising. Reading books is a great distraction, and though many more pages would’ve been turned, the book business has no doubt seen a detrimental impact with book festivals and book signings cancelled, and bookshops both large chains and independent stores closed.
“Our view is that the retail industry will never truly recover from this year. Instead, people will form new habits and seek new ways to earn a living. We want to be part of this inevitable shift, with Book.TV playing a key role in bolstering the publishing industry.”
About OOOOO
Entrepreneurs Sam Jones (former MD at Wish.com) and Eric Zhang (a founding member of TikTok) founded OOOOO in early 2020 with the mission to help people earn a living doing what they love, and to build and inspire like-minded communities.
OOOOO is a digital-first challenger brand disrupting consumer behaviour and bringing a much-needed boost to professionals in the retail, music and arts industries. The company identifies as a trailblazer in entertainment commerce, introducing an innovative way of shopping through live-streamed entertainment on the ground-breaking interactive, social platform OOOOO.
The app launched in November 2020 and has experienced unprecedented growth stimulated through organic social endorsement by the OOOOO community. Reaching No.1 in the UK IOS shopping charts, with 200k downloads to date and weekend shows peaking at 10k community participants.
The concept leverages the traditional format of home shopping networks, socially connecting Real Products, Real People and Real Opinions via an immersive, seamless experience featuring digital ‘TV’ channels. Each channel hosts live, shoppable shows presented by relatable creators, and delivers real-time quality product from merchant brands and independent retailers at dynamic discounts.
The Head Office in Oxford houses a state-of-the-art studio, where hosts can broadcast live shows and access products. OOOOO’s studio in London’s Soho also provides the necessary high-tech environment, with plans to introduce a mobile drop-in studio to further facilitate live broadcasts from anywhere.
About the Founders
Sam founded OOOOO (Video Commerce Group) in 2020 with Eric Zhang – Oxford-based Sam Jones is a serial entrepreneur. He started his career at Accenture as a technology consultant in 1999, before a career in executive search where he ran a leading firm specialising in Investment Banking. He spent 10 years in Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong. Sam started 3 technology companies over the course of 5 years from 2012 to 2017 that all related to data. Sam joined eCommerce unicorn Wish as Managing Director of Marketing in 2017, which today has a valuation of $14bn.
Eric is responsible for the growth strategy of OOOOO and oversight of the China team – Eric started his career as a mobile software engineer at Huawei before becoming a founding member of the Musical.ly start up team as an engineering team lead, helping grow from 0 to 10 million daily active users. Post the acquisition of Musical.ly by Bytedance, Eric was a leader across Douyin and TikTok research and development teams to promote user growth in all major markets.
About Melanie Blake
Ruthless Women takes readers on a wild ride behind the scenes of beloved TV drama Falcon Bay, beamed globally to millions three days a week from its picturesque location in the Channel Islands. But even in this beautiful coastal spot, tensions swirl. Once one of the world’s most popular soap operas, but now with ratings and syndication at an all-time low, the production has been sold to an American businesswoman, beautiful and malevolent Madeline Kane, the new network owner who arrives on the tiny island just off Jersey, determined to do whatever it takes to get the show back to number one.
In a true battle of the sexes, these women will do anything to stay on top. But can they team up to bring down their male rivals? Or will jealousy, betrayal and revenge tear their long-held friendships apart? As the story reaches a climax so shocking readers will be talking about it for decades, one thing is certain: only the most ruthless woman will survive…
As one as the UK’s most successful agents, managers and publicists for British actresses, Melanie Blake has represented some of the most famous faces on British television and international screens. Where her debut novel, the No. 1 bestseller The Thunder Girls, was inspired by the early years of her career spent working in the music industry where she went from working on Top of the Pops, to selling out arenas across the UK and worked with everyone from The Spice Girls to Madonna, her follow up novel Ruthless Women is heavily influenced by the last 15 years Melanie has spent representing more female TV actresses than any other agent in her genre.
Her TV clients past and present include Patsy Kensit, Beverley Callard, Michelle Collins, Stephanie Beacham, Emily Lloyd, Denise Welch, Jennie McAlpine, Claire King, Gaynor Faye, Laila Morse, Daniella Westbrook, Sherrie Hewson, Amanda Barrie, Gillian Taylforth, Coleen Nolan and Nadia Sawalha, to name just a few. Nicknamed the Queen of Soaps, there is no one better placed to write a novel based around a continuing drama and its leading ladies.
Just like Jackie Collins, Melanie Blake’s books are about showing that women are more than equal to men, and about exposing the double standards that women face in the worlds of entertainment, politics, and business – something that Melanie Blake has been doing all her life and continues to expose in Ruthless Women. As well as writing Ruthless Women, which Blake wrote during lockdown 2020, she has written the forward for Jackie Collins novel Drop Dead Beautiful which is being re-issued by Simon & Schuster in November 2021 while her own novel Ruthless Women was published by Head of Zeus on 18th February 2021.
The Curious Ginger Cat 