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Media Companies Join to Extend the Brands of YouTube Stars

Judith Curr, the president and publisher of Atria, says signing YouTube celebrities “gives us access to a whole new talent pool.”Credit...Nancy Borowick for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — Simon & Schuster is making a big bet on YouTube stars, an undertaking that could either open up a blockbuster new publishing market or reveal the limitations of Internet celebrity.

In the latest mash-up of old and new media, a division of Simon & Schuster, the Atria Publishing Group, has teamed with Hollywood’s United Talent Agency to create a new imprint to publish books by Internet entertainers. Five deals have already been made with YouTube stars like Shane Dawson and Justine Ezarik.

Keywords Press, as the new endeavor is called, aims to release six to 10 titles annually, both in print and digital formats, ranging from “serious to comedic, fiction to nonfiction, practical advice to personal memoir,” said Judith Curr, president and publisher of Atria. “Not to be too grand about it, but books are coming to YouTube for the first time,” she said. “It gives us access to a whole new talent pool.”

The deal represents an acknowledgment by traditional media companies that YouTube celebrities are more than just niche entertainers with quirky appeal, and can be marketed to a broader audience. For the video stars, a publishing platform adds a touch of gravitas, not to mention the financing that comes with it.

In addition to Mr. Dawson and Ms. Ezarik, who is better known as iJustine, Keywords Press has made deals with Connor Franta, Joey Graceffa and Shay Butler, the creator of “The ShayTards.” Together, the five entertainers have about 20 million YouTube subscribers and have posted videos generating two billion views.

After successfully trawling the blogosphere for new authors, the big publishing houses — obsessed with finding writers with a built-in audience and encouraging reading among young consumers — are turning to Google’s YouTube and Twitter’s Vine. But this is still untested ground: Although video stars have shown that they can direct their fans to TV, print is an entirely different medium.

Early efforts have largely been disappointing. A recent cookbook from the creators of “Epic Meal Time,” a YouTube extreme cooking show, is a prominent example. It was published in March by Gallery Books, another division of Simon & Schuster, to ho-hum early results.

For United Talent, which operates a respected and aggressive digital division, Keywords Press is about finding new ways to make money by helping YouTube clients like Mr. Dawson and Ms. Ezarik expand their brands. For instance, Mr. Dawson, known for comedic oversharing that leans toward vulgarity, has successfully released music on iTunes, sold a comedy pilot to NBC and is working on a movie. Publishing a book seemed like a natural extension.

“I’ve almost done books before, quite a few times, actually, but there were always so many hoops to jump through, and it always all centered on my single best idea,” Mr. Dawson said. “It always ended up not being very interesting because it didn’t allow for fan interaction to the degree that my fans expect and I want.”

To that end, most Keywords books will be crowdsourced, meaning that Mr. Dawson and his fellow authors will directly involve their followers in storytelling decisions from the earliest stages. That is a big change from the traditional book publishing model, which is centered on formal written proposals. Keywords also aims to get books into the marketplace much faster than a traditional imprint could.

“There wasn’t a publishing apparatus out there that could really take advantage of the unique nature of online stars and their relationship with fans,” said Brent Weinstein, head of United Talent’s digital division. “So we decided to go out and create one.”

The upshot: Keywords represents a bending by old-line publishers to the work practices of the YouTube generation. “I’ve always wanted to write a book, but the proposal process is kind of crazy,” said Ms. Ezarik, who has parlayed YouTube stardom into an acting, endorsement and fashion career. “I would say, ‘Why can’t I just do it?’ That’s what we are used to doing online.”

What will Ms. Ezarik’s book be about? The details are still fuzzy.

“I have so many random, behind-the-scenes stories to tell, and I really want it to be inspirational,” she said. “But I also want to know what my fans want my book to be like.” With any luck, she added, “the book will be successful, and we can turn it into a movie or a TV series.”

Atria, whose traditional authors include Brad Thor (“The Last Patriot”) and Rhonda Byrne (“The Secret”), and United Talent, whose movie star clients include Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, provided little information about the Keywords business model. It involves an advance payment, but authors are meant to share in profits to a larger degree than is typical. Keywords authors do not necessarily need to be United Talent clients.

Keywords Press is only one example of increased digital innovation at United Talent and Simon & Schuster, which is owned by the CBS Corporation. United Talent, for instance, helped incubate AwesomenessTV, a fast-growing YouTube empire focused on preteenage girls. DreamWorks Animation bought Awesomeness last year in a deal valued up to $117 million and brokered by the agency.

And on Wednesday, Simon & Schuster announced that it would make some 10,000 backlist titles available on the emerging e-book subscription services Oyster and Scribd, becoming the second of the five major publishing houses to test those waters, after HarperCollins. Some publishers worry that subscription services like these, which provide broad access to a digital library for a monthly fee, will puncture single-copy sales.

“Consumers have clearly taken to subscription models for other media, and we expect that our participation in these services will encourage discovery of our books,” Carolyn Reidy, the Simon & Schuster chief executive, said in a statement.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Media Companies Join to Extend the Brands of YouTube Stars. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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