(FORTUNE Magazine) – WITH THE TEMPERATURE plummeting, now's the time most of us start daydreaming about beach vacations. Book publishers, however, start daydreaming about ways to drum up interest in lighter literary fare--a.k.a. upscale beach reading. To that end, five New York publishing houses are teaming up with an exclusive resort to get new books in the right readers' hands early.

Little Dix Bay, a return-to-nature resort in the British Virgin Islands, has partnered with HarperCollins, Hyperion, Knopf, Random House, and Simon & Schuster to create an exclusive library of some of the season's most anticipated books. The twist? Beach bums will get to read the titles weeks or even months before they hit stores in the states. Hot Type, as the collaboration has been dubbed at Little Dix, will launch in late November. Guests can order up books poolside or in their rooms (though, unlike other room service items, the books must be returned at the end of the stay).

"When they approached me about this, I said yes immediately," says Robert Miller, president of Hyperion, which will debut two Hot Type titles this season--Rosie Dunne by Cecelia Ahern and The Same Sweet Girls by Cassandra King. "Word of mouth is the best way to sell books, and it's the hardest to create. But if you're sitting by the pool and you see other people reading a book that's free for the taking, you might just pick it up and discover a new author."

For the publishers, the fact that Little Dix Bay has long attracted a posh literary crowd was another draw. The resort was founded by Laurance S. Rockefeller in 1964 as an eco-friendly getaway for the well-off (these days rooms go for from $495 to $4,400 per night in peak season). The hotel has just finished building its first pool, and, better yet for those in the business of books, there's not a single TV on the property. -- Nadira A. Hira