Berg was a mere freelancer (read: no platform) when Sherman sold her tale to Sourcebooks in February.

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Dominique Raccah, publisher and CEO of Sourcebooks, a Naperville, Ill.

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At Sourcebooks responsibility for making books has even been shifted from the editorial team to the firm's head of technology, underlining the need to think digitally right from the start of the commissioning process.

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Sourcebooks, a medium-sized publisher that has developed an online group focused on poetry, found that sales of its books rose by more than 50% in the six weeks after poems from them had featured on the site.

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In the last year these include, among others: Living Life in Full Bloom by Elizabeth Murray (Rodale), Letters from Paris by Janice MacLeod (Sourcebooks), Closer Than You Think by Debbie Heneghan (Hampton Roads), and Superhealing by Elaine Ferguson (HCI).

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