Red Room: Facebook for Authors and Fans

For librarians seeking to check out what their patrons' favorite authors are doing, heading right to the source may be a great way to keep up. One option is through Red Room, a new start-up that aims to connect authors to their fans.

Launched a year ago, Redroom.com—named after a White House room appropriated by Eleanor Roosevelt—is described as "Facebook for authors" by founder and CEO Ivory Madison, who is out to entice publishers to underwrite their authors' presence on the site financially. Red Room has about 20,000 members and hosts about 2000 authors. Over the next several months, the site will roll out a variety of new features, including friending, group, contest, and calendar functions.

Fans and general readers can join Red Room for free, share reading lists, find reviews, and follow their favorite authors through the site's blogs, videos, and podcasts. The site is organized around prominent authors (who are generally invited to join) as well as lesser-known writers and self-published wordsmiths, who are vetted before acceptance. The site has attracted a number of name authors—T. Coraghessan Boyle, Amy Tan, Po Bronson, Jon Stewart—an important element in Madison's business model.

The Red Room is divided into a soft hierarchy of different kinds of authors—published, unpublished, and self-published—and focuses on their specific needs, Madison said. An author herself—she writes graphic novels for DC Comics—Madison is also a lawyer. She first launched a writing school, Red Room Writing School, before founding Red Room. "One grew out of the other," she said. "I wanted something scalable that could serve more people than the school. And I wanted it to be about something I care about—writers and writing."