According to executive Jamie Mottram, For The Win is the first sports site designed specifically to reach readers on viral networks like Facebook or Twitter. Owned by USA Today, the site is staffed by veteran sports writers from outlets like Deadspin and the New York Times who are tasked with finding sharable content.

“You don’t have to be a sports fan to laugh at the ridiculous new logo of the New Orleans Pelicans or openly weep at the 30 year old bat boy with Down Syndrome’s reaction to a Reds home run,” said Mottram, in a phone interview.

Mottram, whose pasts gigs include creating Yahoo! Sports’ blog network and AOL’s Fanhouse, is fond of using terms like “viral lift” and “social currency” to explain For The Win’s plan to build an audience through social media.

For The Win’s social-first approach follows the playbook of viral powerhouse BuzzFeed and newcomer Upworthy. Both these sites, which rely heavily on analytics and A/B headline testing, have acquired enormous audiences by looking to social media, rather than their homepages, as a primary source of traffic. Mottram thinks such tactics can give For The Win an edge as it competes with traditional outlets like ESPN and CBS Sports, and with popular digital natives like Deadspin, SB Nation and Bleacher Report.

“I think a lot of those sites are catering to legacy behaviors and technology,” said Mottram. “SB Nation was born on online communities — message boards around each team. Bleacher Report is a search-oriented content farm. For The Win is produced on a basis of really sharable content.”

The site’s distribution and content strategy will also rely on the sprawling sports network of USA Today parent, Gannett Company, which has affiliation agreements with properties like MLB Trade Rumors and Black Sports Online. For The Win’s content will also appear in legacy properties like the paper edition of USA Today.

For The Win is opening shop with 10 writers and editors and, for the first two months, is relying on Right Guard as an exclusive sponsor. Down the road, says Mottram, the site will rely on a dual revenue stream of display and native advertising.

Correction: this story was updated at 11:45ET to reflect that Gannett has affiliation agreements with certain properties but does not control them as previously stated.

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Several hundred newspapers now have paywalls of some kind, but for the most part, it’s the small and mid-size papers that have been the early adopters. Last year, for example, Gannett put all 80 of its community newspapers’ websites behind metered paywalls, while keeping its flagship paper, USA Today, free online.

But the New York Times‘ ability to attract subscribers in the two years since its paywall went live – combined with the increasingly tough digital advertising market – seems to have caused some of the bigger newspapers to reconsider. In the last year alone, six of the biggest newspapers in the U.S. have announced plans to start charging for their digital editions: the LA Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Orange County Register.

As of now, 12 of the top-20 U.S. newspapers (by weekday circulation) have either enacted a paid scheme or plan to do so.

Click the graphic to the left to see which of the biggest newspapers have paywalls.

I got a demo of Bookish at the company’s trendy, book-filled offices in Manhattan’s Flatiron District last week, and had a chance to use the site further on Monday when it was prematurely available online for several hours as it was being tested. Overall, I think the long-delayed Bookish is off to a promising start.

Bookish has the opportunity to shape book discovery and offers publishers a chance to directly engage with readers. It also allows them to tiptoe into direct sales. I’m less intrigued by the original editorial content: I’m not sure it differentiates itself enough from other book-related content on the web to draw users to the site for the first time. Once those users make their way to the site, though, they’ll find a clean, easy-to-use design, and an algorithm that may well find them their next book — even though it’s limited to less than a quarter of the books on the site for now. Here’s my overview of the site.

 The basics: Books and authors

While only three of the big-six publishers are financially backing the site, the other three — Random House, HarperCollins and Macmillan — are making their books available through it, along with 10 other publishers including Scholastic and Houghton Mifflin. In total, that’s 1.2 million unique titles spanning 18 genres (fiction and literature, children’s, cookbooks, and so on), and 400,000 authors have profile pages. The book pages include basic information, a preview of the first chapter, related news and videos, and a roundup of any “must-read” lists that the book has appeared on (for more on those lists, see below). Each book page also includes purchase links (more on that below, too).

Algorithm-generated book recommendations

Online book discovery is a huge problem for publishers, and Bookish tackles it with a recommendation algorithm that lets users input up to four titles to find what to read next. “We’re very much a technology company,” Karen Sun, an MIT grad (and book blogger) who is heading the company’s recommendation engine, told me. “This is probably the largest venture in the book space, in terms of data.” Sun explained that while Amazon and Goodreads primarily deliver book recommendations based on “collaborative filtering” — namely, a user’s purchasing or rating and reviewing history as well as those of other users — Bookish doesn’t have that user or purchase data yet. Instead, it relies on “deep, introspective” data: “Recommendations are based on the books and understanding of the books.” The recommendation looks at features like the authors, editors and illustrators who contributed to a book, the awards a book has won, and genre and publication date, then layers on a machine-learning component that parses user and professional reviews to try to distill themes, concepts and sentiments. Insights from the editorial team are included, too.

A user who liked The Help, for instance, receives recommendations for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford — another women’s fiction title that features race relations — and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book that, like The Help, includes an aspiring female author. Type in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and the engine pulled up four similar “big ideas” books, but also two Spanish-language titles that were out of place even if the subject matter was similar (and you’ll see a Spanish-language edition of The Room in the recommendations for The Help above).

For now, Bookish’s recommendation engine works with only about 250,000 of the 1.2 million books on the site. Sun says the engine will improve over time, and will eventually integrate reader reviews and user actions — other books users have looked at and rated on the site.

E-commerce: Essential, but…

Each book on the site can be purchased in print or digital formats directly through Bookish or from another retailer — there are affiliate links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, IndieBound, Apple and Kobo.

Distributor Baker & Taylor is handling all of Bookish’s direct sales. For now, ebooks purchased through Bookish are only available in EPUB and PDF formats, for reading on iPad, Android, Nook and desktop — no Kindle.

Bookish seems to want to stress that it’s not cutting into other retailers’ sales, even though a serious direct-sales outlet is something that book publishers desperately need.

“We want to be able to say you can buy [a book] here and it’s reasonably priced. We’re not trying to steal sales away from other places,” CEO Khazaei told me. Publishers probably don’t care about taking sales from Amazon, but they may not want to sour relationships with retailers like Barnes & Noble and the independent bookstores represented by IndieBound.

Bookish’s print and ebook prices appeared to match those offered by Amazon, though I wasn’t able to test many titles. Khazaei told me that “I don’t know how the pricing decisions are made, really,” Khazaei said. “I assume [Baker & Taylor] is tracking [prices on other sites] but we just leave it in their hands.” While the site seems like an obvious place for publishers to run special sales on both print and digital books, that doesn’t seem to be a priority for now. Update: Khazaei stressed to me that his lack of involvement with pricing is required by the Department of Justice in order to be compliant with antitrust regulations. (The DOJ sued Hachette, Penguin and Simon & Schuster, along with Macmillan and HarperCollins, last year for allegedly colluding to set ebook prices; Hachette, Penguin and S&S all settled.)

Original editorial content along with the algorithm

Bookish has seven full-time editors who each manage different genres and update those sections daily with original book coverage. The site is also soliciting pieces from well-known authors and other public figures. In one ongoing feature, for instance, editors from The Onion review books. Other editorial features at launch include a column by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert and an interview between bestselling thriller authors Michael Connelly and Michael Kortya. In addition to that content, the site’s editors are curating columns and lists of books like “The Biggest BFF Breakups in YA Books” and “Big Ideas.”

Advertising, revenue and partnerships

Bookish is collaborating with USA Today’s books website. Its original editorial content will be syndicated on USA Today’s website, and the technology that Bookish uses to let readers view the first chapter of a book and to offer book recommendations will also be included on USA Today’s site. In exchange, Bookish will feature USA Today’s book bestseller lists on bookish.com.

In addition to book sales, Bookish will get revenue from advertising. For now the site’s ad slots are taken up with books from the three launch partners, but eventually the company will expand advertising to other publishers and to companies from outside the book business. Prior to its launch two years ago, Bookish had announced an advertising and content syndication deal with AOL Huffington Post, but that’s off the drawing board for now. A company spokeswoman told me Bookish is “in discussions about continuing to work with AOL in the future.”

Not a focus: Social, self-publishing

Other publishers can sign an agreement with Bookish to add their titles to the site. (Khazaei told me Bookish doesn’t charge publishers anything to join, but they presumably have to fulfill a number of requirements to be included.) However, self-published authors can’t add their books. “The focus right now is on traditionally published titles,” Khazaei said.

Also at launch, the social features that are a key part of Goodreads’ mission are absent from Bookish. Users can’t friend or follow each other — the focus is on a reader’s individual interests. I found that refreshing: Just because you’re Facebook friends with someone doesn’t mean that he or she shares your book preferences, and I prefer the algorithm-driven approach.

The app represents a big bet on technology by parent company Gannett which, like other newspaper chains, is on borrowed time as it tries to solve the digital dilemma before its traditional print ad earnings collapse once and for all.

The company’s gamble comes in the form of a bespoke content management system that lets editors tailor content specifically for a mobile audience rather than simply slinging content from the USA Today website. In practice, this means shorter and snappier headlines and choosing hard news stories in the morning and then more visual, feature-like fare for later in the day. The move coincides with a mass reader migration to smartphones and tablet devices.

“We’re starting to think of these as products that should be actively programmed rather than taking things that were produced for another medium,” said Gannett’s Chief Digital Officer, David Payne. He added the process gives USA Today editors more levers to pull in serving mobile content and interjects a new human element to the curation process.

As for the app itself, it’s attractive but hardly a knockout compared to the mobile sites of digital natives like The Verge or the Atlantic’s Quartz:

And then there is the revenue question.

The market for online display ads is suffering from a supply glut and collapsing prices, meaning publishers like USA Today must find other revenue sources and find them soon. Payne says video ads, which pay much better, will be a cornerstone of the site’s approach to expanding its ad offerings. Specifically, the plan is to intersperse more videos among USA Today‘s text and photo content — a plan that will be easier given Gannett’s multiple broadcast properties.

Finally, Gannett’s 80 or so regional newspapers will be plugged into the new content management system, meaning it will be easier to pluck and share content from across the USA Today and other sites. The regional papers are also part of a major paywall experiment in which Gannett is testing which paywall schemes work best in various places. These opportunities for scale and curation may let Gannett unlock other business opportunities.

Overall, Gannett came into the digital era with a weak hand. But sound management (the company is posting respectable numbers) and bold bets on tech like this one could help the USA Today enjoy a second act in coming years.

Down to You and The Wild Ones by Michelle Leighton (self-published, romance)

How they hit the list: Leighton, who goes by M. Leighton and has self-published fifteen books, says she’s not sure how Down to You and The Wild Ones hit the New York Times bestseller lists. She did a promotional event at book review blog A Tale of Many Reviews for two weeks following each book’s release.

Leighton just signed a deal with Penguin imprint Berkley for The Wild Ones. “They’ll be taking over the ebook soon and then we’ll be working together on the next two books out, once I get them written,” she said. “I’m so, so excited to be taking this journey with them.” Her agent is Kim Whalen at Trident.

New York Times bestseller list, week of 11/4/12

Here are the titles in the top 35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 10/25/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top 35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis (Soho Press)

What it’s about: Danish nurse Nina Borg discovers a three-year-old boy in a suitcase, naked and drugged and alive. As she treks across Denmark to find out where he came from and how to get him back, her life is in danger. It’s #25 on the New York Times ebook bestseller list this week.

How it hit the list: Soho Press, a NYC-based independent publisher that focuses on literary fiction and international crime, is selling the ebook edition of The Boy in the Suitcase for $1.99 this August. Soho Press first published the English-language edition in fall 2011. The paperback edition comes out in September, and the next book in the Nina Borg series, Invisible Murder, will be published in October.

When Soho Press put The Boy in the Suitcase ebook on sale — in concert with an advertising campaign across crime blogs –”presales of the digital edition of Invisible Murder jumped way up,” says Paul Oliver, Soho’s director of marketing and publicity. “The promotional tools in this case are working in a very consistent way. Ebook readers are going on to purchase the follow-up.”

The book is included in Amazon’s August “100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or Less” promotion.

The Boy in the Suitcase on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google  | Kobo | Sony

New York Times bestseller list, week of 8/26/12

Here are the titles in the top 35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 8/16/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top 35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

Playing for Keeps and Perfection by R.L. Mathewson (self-published)

Romance author R.L. Mathewson has written eight paranormal and contemporary romance novels. This week, the first two books in her “Neighbors from Hell” series are on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.

What the books are about: In both romances, the main characters discover that their neighbors aren’t so bad after all.

How the books hit the lists: Frequent readers of this column know that Amazon promotions often lead directly to ebooks becoming bestsellers, but in this case R.L. Mathewson received a boost from a different source: Apple. As digital self-publishing platform and e-bookstore Smashwords notes, Mathewson is being featured as a “breakout author” in the iBookstore’s romance section, with “promotional bricks” for her books elsewhere in the iBookstore. Playing for Keeps is #10 on Apple’s ebook bestseller list. The books is also climbing the Kindle charts, with Playing for Keeps at #123 and Perfection at #126.

What’s next: Mathewson is releasing a third book in the “Neighbors from Hell” series this fall and simultaneously launching a charity campaign for wounded soldiers, “Checkmate for Charity.”

All of Mathewson’s books are $0.99 now, but she’ll be raising her prices to $2.99 over the next couple of weeks. “I held the cost down at a dollar for as long as I could, but once things took off I started to get swamped with more responsibility,” she tells me. “I had to hire a full time PA and a part time PA to run my charity program, help with Facebook, emails, proof reading, etc. It was a hard decision and one that I discussed with some of my readers at my Facebook page. Some people suggested that $2.99 was still too low, but I’d like to keep the books as affordable as possible. For those that cannot afford the price hike we will be doing what we can on an individual basic based upon need.”

Playing for Keeps on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google  | Kobo | Sony

Perfection on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google | Kobo | Sony

New York Times bestseller list, week of 8/12/12

Here are the titles in the top 35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 8/2/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top 35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

The Sullivans series by Bella Andre (self-published)

Romance author Bella Andre has self-published nine books and traditionally published eight. The self-published books have all been bestsellers at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and Kobo. Overall, Andre has sold 915,000 self-published ebooks, and she expects sales of 160,000 in July alone.

What it’s about: Andre’s “Sullivans” series is about a close-knit family of eight siblings who, one by one, find their true loves. The first book in the series, The Look of Love, was published in June 2011; Andre has since published four more.

This week, three “Sullivans” books are on the New York Times bestseller list at #22, #23 and #24, and three titles are on the USA Today bestseller list at #28, #51 and #56.

How the books hit the lists: Andre worked with Amazon on a “Gold Box Deal,” which ran on July 21 and priced each of the five books in the series at $1.99. (The books are normally priced between $4.99 and $5.99.)

What’s next: Andre will release the sixth book in the Sullivans series, Let Me Be the One, this fall. The “Sullivans” books will be published in Brazil and France, through traditional publishers, soon and there are more foreign deals in the works.

In addition, she says, “I would very much like to see my Sullivan books with wide print distribution in North America and have high hopes that the right situation for that will present itself soon.”

The Look of Love: The Sullivans, Book 1 on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google  | Kobo | Sony

A Sweethaven Summer by Courtney Walsh (Guideposts)

Before Walsh got into fiction, she wrote two scrapbooking idea books, Scrapbooking Your Faith and The Busy Scrapper, both published by F&W. She also recently published a scrapbooking ebook, Step Up Your Supplies.

What it’s about: A Sweethaven Summer centers around a group of women who are brought back together thanks to an old scrapbook and secrets inside. The book is #19 on the NYT bestseller list this week and #36 on the USA Today list.

How the book hit the lists: Inspirational publisher Guideposts released A Sweethaven Summer in February 2012 and is now running a promotion with Kindle and Nook selling the ebook for $0.99. The second book in the series, A Sweethaven Homecoming, will be published on August 1.

A Sweethaven Summer on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google | Kobo | Sony

New York Times bestseller list, week of 8/5/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 7/26/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty (Penguin/Riverhead)

What it’s about: Silent movie star Louise Brooks, at age 15, is accompanied by 36-year-old Cora Carlisle from Wichita to New York. The trip changes both of them. This week the book is #12 on the New York Times  ebook bestseller list and #21 on the USA Today list, with digital copies outselling print.

How the book hit the NYT list: The Chaperone, published on June 5, hit the NYT hardcover extended list earlier this summer and was chosen as USA Today‘s #1 hot fiction pick. But the ebook is seeing renewed success now because it was chosen as the Kindle Daily Deal on July 8 and was sold for $2.99. It’s now back to its digital list price, $12.99.

The Chaperone on … Amazon Kindle | Apple | Barnes & Noble Nook | Google  | Kobo | Sony

And don’t miss…

• Scholastic’s fourth-quarter earnings rose, due in large part to the success of Suzanne Collins’ dystopian trilogy The Hunger Games. Scholastic announced that the trilogy has sold over 50 million print and digital copies in the U.S.; the bestselling book of the three is still The Hunger Games, with over 23 million copies sold.
• Last week I featured Colleen Hoover’s self-published YA romance Slammed. It’s still on the NYT ebook bestseller list at #13 (and the USA Today list at #22), and now its sequel, Point of Retreat, is on the NYT ebook list too, at #19.
  

New York Times bestseller list, week of 7/29/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 7/21/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

“TV on the Web” will appear as a daily online and print listing of what  editors and reporters at the Gannett-owned national newspaper feel are the best web videos and podcasts. The selection will be highlighted by USA Today Pop Candy blogger Whitney Matheson, who will render a weekly viewing recommendation.

Also read: MarketWatch founder Larry Kramer is USA Today’s new editor

While there are numerous other internet video programming guides out there, this is one of the first from a big mainstream newspaper.

“With celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Jerry Seinfeld entering the web-only space, and alternative programming sites such as YouTube, Hulu and Netflix carrying exclusive programming, the time has come to reflect the changing media landscape,” Kramer said in a statement.

In print, the new feature will appear on the TV listings page, and it will have its own dedicated spot online at tvontheweb.usatoday.com.

Kramer, a decorated digital media leader best known for founding MarketWatch and serving as CBS’ first digital chief, took over the top editorial spot at USA Today in May, with the mandate of accentuating the paper’s bubbling digital momentum.

USA Today’s revenue from digital operations was up 25 percent in the first quarter.