Patrick Borders on Emdashery pointed out “Browse Inside” yesterday. It has the potential to be an interesting tool from HarperCollins for readers and bloggers. But it still has some problems.
The Good
Patrick gave a nifty link to the HarperCollins Press Release on the new tool. At least, Brian Murray of HarperCollins understands how bloggers are just beginning to change the face of marketing.
“We are extending our reach beyond the HarperCollins site to where many potential book buyers visit – on social communities, blogs or author sites.”
I’ve been talking to other publishers and marketing folks who still don’t get it. They think bloggers are just literary exhibitionists with plungers on their head, pretending to be unicorns. But we bloggers know better. We know the wave of people installing cable modems is going to change blogging for good. We know that bite-sized, user-generated media is going to change media consumption for good. And we know that the easiest personal media to generate will always be the original media—good words.
So here is my attempt to use the new HarperCollins widget for Scott Cairns book Short Trip to the Edge. He has written about this experience for TheHighCalling.org several months ago in Whose Notice Matters? That was actually a big thrill in my early editing career. I went to work and edited an article by Scott Cairns! It was a cool and humbling and terrifying moment.
In that article, Scott challenges the way we view success. He writes,
“In an era when so much is made of material acquisition and celebrity, the humble pursuit of prayer, and of a life of prayer, may strike some as archaic or unhealthy.”
After you read the full article, use the widget below to read more of Scott’s ideas…
Update: Clearly, the widget, she don’t work so good. The original title of this post was “Publisher Offers Free Literary Peep Show.” But since the peep show ain’t working, here’s an additional section to this post.
The Bad: Much Ado About Nothing
It happens to the best of us. We get excited. We believe the press releases and we think, “Wow, what a great gadget that will be!” Then we buy it, and it sits forgotten in a drawer of our nightstand. Or worse, we can never figure out how to get the thing to work.
Two big problems with the HarperCollins Browse Inside widget.
1) It doesn’t work in PHP based blogs. Like WordPress. Fools! Release a widget, but alienate the most tech savvy bloggers?! You would believe the recoding I had to do just to get the empty box to show up. Where is Scott Cairn’s cover? Who knows. Scott, I’m sorry man. I tried. I tried.
2) The whole thing is just an effot to direct sales away from Amazon.com to the publisher directly. I can’t blame them for this, but how soon before HarperCollins removes the well-coded “Search Inside” function from all of it’s books on Amazon.com?
If you still want to “Browse Inside” Scott’s book, go to Short Trip to the Edge on HarperCollins’ site. Then click “Browse Inside.” Or maybe, just maybe, click here.
Update 2: Curses! Even following their own link doesn’t work! ARRGGHHH. Go back to pages and presses, HarperCollins!
Wait a minute. Let me calm down here. You tried. You recognize the value of bloggers. I won’t hold it against you that it isn’t working well yet. After all, the service has only been available for a few days.
But get it fixed soon, will you?
And don’t stop allowing us to search inside your books on Amazon.
{ 7 comments }
Widget. Hmmm… Pardon while I fidget. What’m I supposed to do? Looks like lines of code to me.
Yeah, I’m working on revising this post to a tone of disgruntlement.
Yikes. I was going to thank you for the link, but I’m afraid you might hunt me down for encouraging you to drop a sabotage device into your blog! Your update is now showing up in the sidebar–at least on my screen. :0
I did try the widget on a post I’m doing for tomorrow, and it worked fine in Typepad. I guess they don’t call it the bleeding-edge for nothin.
In HC’s defense (just a teeny tiny bit), I think their focus is the MySpace market.
I did browse Scott’s book from the HC site, and it looks great.
The update’s in the sidebar? Hilarious. Well, it looks okay in IE 7.0 and Firefox 6.0. Oh well.
I still can’t browse Scott’s book from IE 7.0. Strange.
It’s always good to hear from you, Patrick.
Also, Patrick, I’m glad you directed me to the Browse Inside tool! I hope my disgrumblement with HarperCollins didn’t feel like it was directed towards you.
Oh, not at all. I just throw these things out there because I tend to think any new thing is cool. But sometimes, they’re not so much!
BTW, the update moved from the sidebar to the body soon after I posted my comment. I was on FF5.0, so it was probably on my end.
Well, that’s good that it looks normal. I was checking for code issues and posting and editing. You probably just came on in the middle of that process.
And keep throwing out those cool things on your blog! I always enjoy checking them out at least.
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