Weber is being modest--Insight rocks! At rollout it is already available for over 5,000 Random House titles, and its keyword search and adobe-quality manipulation of book content is stunning. HarperCollins is going to have to go back and think things over again.
Unfortunately, Insight's HTML code limits the way endusers will employ it. Blogger doesn't recognize it for use in individual posts. I had to incorporate it permanently into my sidebar, which, frankly, is coming on a bit strong. (I thought we were still getting to know each other.) And Insight can't be used on MySpace, though Random House says they are working on the necessary code.
Still, according to The Guardian:
The experience, although undeniably technologically impressive, is slightly less engaging than picking up a book and leafing through it. The future of the coffee table, unlike that of traditional publishing, is probably assured for a few more years.
4 comments:
Okay, I promise that it was there in the sidebar and now it is gone. I'm not sure where it is now. Maybe you can only use it once and POOF! that's it.
It's there now, and it's great....
According to Joe Lewis, a staff writer at Webpro News, the new widget technology released by Random House and HarperCollins is a blatant defiance of Google's online book initiative. "whole move seems almost prideful in a way." he writes. "Do Random House and HarperCollins really believe that can manage this whole thing better than Google, a company that has built its entire brand on the backbone of the prowess of its search technology?"
And I thought this bit he quotes from Techdirt was interesting:
The question, really, is why bother? All these publishers are creating limited, expensive, fragmented searches for books, when Google (and others such as Yahoo and Amazon) are more than willing to do the work for them, while bringing all the offerings together. There are very, very few people in this world who think about books in terms of who published them.
No one wants to know that they need to go to a certain place to search for a Random House book and another for a HarperCollins book. Instead, let the search engines do the work (and spend the money), and the search engines will bring in the people and help drive sales. Building separate, fragmented book searches hardly seems like a compelling or cost-effective plan.
Both points are well taken.
Bloomsbury Offers New Online Book Preview
PW April 17, 2007
Bloomsbury Publishing has teamed with LibreDigital, a digital publishing services provider, to create Look Inside, allowing readers to search and preview Bloomsbury titles on the Web, in their original print form and look. Similar in feel to Amazon.com’s Search Inside feature, the new Web application will also allow online booksellers to easily display and promote book content.
The new service is available on the Web site of all Bloomsbury divisions, including Bloomsbury USA, Walter & Company, A&C Black and Berlin Verlag. The service will be made available to booksellers in the next few months. Stephanie Duncan, Bloomsbury’s digital media director, said the service allows content to be displayed without jeopardizing copyrights and will offer “substantial benefits to readers, authors and booksellers.”
I wonder if these "look inside" options created independent from a big service like Amazon really pay off? With this announcement from Bloomsbury, it makes you wonder who is next, and whether readers will want to pay attention to smaller, publisher-centric apps.
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