Publishers have faced a vexing question in recent years: As newspapers’ book coverage shrinks and fewer people shop in brick-and-mortar bookstores, how might publishers open a conversation with readers online, without getting lost in the digital sea?

Grove Atlantic President and Publisher Morgan Entrekin is the latest to take a crack at it. He, along with a broad group of publishers, literary magazines and booksellers, is developing a website styled as a Huffington Post for the literary world—a one-stop shop of bookish aggregation.

The site, scheduled to go live on April 8, is called Literary Hub. Focusing on literary fiction and nonfiction, it will present personal and critical essays, interviews and book excerpts contributed by nearly 70 partners ranging from the small press New Directions to heavyweights such as Scribner, Knopf and Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Bookstores and literary magazines such as the Paris Review also will contribute. The site, at lithub.com, will commission original content, including dispatches on the literary scenes in cities across the country, bookstore profiles and a weekly review of books. (Organizers are still discussing whether it should publish its own book reviews.) The site will offer a new book excerpt each day, and a daily roundup of literary news.

“There’s a gigantic amount of literary content being produced each day but unless you have 10 people looking for it, you won’t find it,” Mr. Entrekin said. “We’re going to hopefully bring it to you.”

Early offerings will include an essay about how screenwriting influences fiction writing by Aleksandar Hemon, whose novel, “The Making of Zombie Wars,” will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May. The site will also offer an essay by Russell Banks about driving north through Alaska in a shiny red Hummer, while contemplating global warming; and an essay by British novelist Christie Watson about writing a book while raising two biracial children as a single parent.