For Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz, who have written nine baby name books and just launched a baby name website christened Nameberry.com, last Friday was another banner day: Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz had announced they are calling their new baby boy Bronx Mowgli Wentz. (Bronx after the New York City borough and Mowgli from The Jungle Book.) "The crazier the celebrity name, the better for us," Satran told Shelf Awareness later in the day. "Right away People and Us Weekly called, and at 6:30 in the morning I wrote a blog item about it."
Nameberry's home page featured the post, and Us quoted Rosenkrantz in its online story. (She said in part, "This is the biggest double whammy since Moxie CrimeFighter (daughter of magician Penn Jillette) and Pilot Inspektor (son of actor Jason Lee).")
This was only the most recent bit of publicity nameberry and the baby naming team have received since launching the site in October--the franchise got some e-ink in BuzzFeed, Slate, the Daily Beast (Satran had an article, "10 Ways to Avoid Hipster Baby Names," which helped provide "style and quality credibility") and Huffington Post, where Satran wrote about the 10 best celebrity names. So far, nameberry has had a million page views and close to 100,000 visitors.
The site includes the blog ("We resisted blogging early on, but now we're into it," Satran commented) as well as a name of the day, a list of the day, information about Satran and Rosenkrantz's books and some "very active" message boards. The site will take advertising, but that part is just taking its first steps.
Has all the nameberry buzz led to increased book sales? For now, that's not directly measurable--and perhaps not the main point. The site has links to Amazon, the chains, Powell's and IndieBound for purchasing books. "I like to think that in a year we could sell books from the site," Satran added. At the moment though, it's enough that "we have a site and great content, and maybe we're selling more books, too."
For book sales and the franchise in general it was important to have a presence online, where many parents-to-be research baby names. "If we're not on the Web, we're nowhere," Satran said. Instantly Nameberry distinguished itself from the competition: "There are a million baby naming sites, but we're the only one based on nine books."
St. Martin's, Satran and Rosenkrantz's publisher, has been supportive, and Satran emphasized that "we're not giving away all the information here. There's a lot on the site that's not in the books, and there's a lot in the books that's not on the site."
Satran and Rosenkrantz began building their baby-naming empire 20 years ago with Beyond Jennifer & Jason. In 1988, the Internet was in its infancy, and as Satran said, "Nobody cared about electronic rights, so we kept them." The pair continued writing baby-naming books, which have included The Baby Name Bible, Cool Names for Babies and the updated version of their first born, now called Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana. (They're also working on another updated version called Beyond Ava and Aiden that will appear next spring.)
Satran and Rosenkrantz had licensing agreements with organizations such as AOL but didn't think of launching their own website until a little more than a year ago, when they were approached by a diaper company that wanted to set up a very commercial licensing deal. Satran ran the idea by a lawyer friend who suggested they have their own presence on the web. Ergo nameberry, which was brought to term with a small investment. "If we spent $1,000 on it, that's a lot," Satran said.
We'd call nameberry Money Well Spent.--John Mutter