Widgets

Empower your titles to sow themselves virally all over the Net

One of the most exciting concepts to emerge from Web 2.0 initiatives is the concept of social networks - loose groupings of people based on a common interest.  Those interests can be demographic (teens, moms, seniors) or topical (golfers, professionals, lawyers).  There are thousands of social networks and Publishers have an unprecedented opportunity to promote discussion around their titles – and to sell books by virally-catalyzed interest.

LibreDigital created its widget technology as a means for Publishers to encourage the references to their titles in an internet-friendly way.  Widgets are embeddable snippets of code that can be shared on the Net.  A BookBrowse^TM widget is embeddable code that features (usually) the jacket artwork of the original title and, when clicked, opens a BookBrowse reader that lets potential readers flip through the chapters in the book, mimicking that experience in a bookstore.  The great thing about LibreDigital’s BookBrowse widgets is that they point to the digital books in the LDW.

Here’s an example of a BookBrowse widget (please also visit our Resources Section to sample our materials in the BookBrowse widget window!)

Widgetry Power for Publishers

So what can widgets do for you as a Book Publisher?  Widgets can simply be featured on a Publisher’s core website to allow a preview function.  Used this way, it is said that merely by providing a BookBrowse preview, Publishers can experience a 5-7% increase in sales.  Potential book buyers can verify prior to purchasing that a given book will meet their expectations.  Because LibreDigital applies metadata in the form of tags, potential buyers can link to the Table of Contents, for example, and peruse the structure of a non-fiction book. 

But the real power and excitement around widgets is viral.  What is meant by viral?  It means that networked individuals can communicate their interest and enthusiasm for your titles in a social networking model by dropping a widget that references that title on their personal MySpace Page (or on whatever social network they are members of).  Perhaps they are enthusiasts for a certain author or title – as friends and networkers visit that page, they too can harvest your widget code and put it on their own page.  And so on and so on. 

Now imagine taking your entire backlist, putting those titles in the LDW and offering widgets for every title – you now have created a powerful paradigm for monetizing titles that have moved out of print over the years.  Combine that business model with Print on Demand and you have an exceptional market development opportunity with little fixed cost.  Most Publishers are extremely motivated to migrate to this digital business model!