Book2Look, the embeddable book widget service that offers a "view inside" books, has partnered with bookseller Books-A-Million in the U.S. and publisher HarperCollins worldwide. The agreements expand the German company's presence in the U.S. following its partnership with Bookshop.org, which was announced last year.
Book2Look’s widgets, which the company has dubbed “biblets,” provide a preview of numerous pages while browsing. The service offers such additional features as reviews, video and audio clips, buy links, and built-in analytics that give insight into user engagement.
Founded in Germany in 2008 by publishing veteran Rolf Möllers, the company was initially built for the German book industry, but has become an alternative to Amazon’s “Look Inside” technology. The company works with Bowker to market Book2Look's services to the U.S. industry.
"It really comes down to discoverability—there are more books being published every year, so creating online marketing tools that can help a title stand out matters,” said Beat Barblan, general manager at Bowker. Ideally, this will lead to increased sales. “Market research from Nielsen shows that the option to look inside a book before purchase is among the top deciding factors after author, topic, genre, and price,” said Mary Carlomagno, director of sales and business development for Bowker.
Results have been positive enough, Carlomagno said, that Book2Look in now part of the marketing plans for over 400 publishers. Moving forward, Carlomagno added, she is "working in the U.S. and Australia to solidify more distribution channels and to continue to sign up more social media savvy presses.”
Andy Hunter, CEO of Bookshop.org, said he has been pleased with the results his company has had with Book2Look. When someone clicks on a Book2Look widget on a title, it is "three times more likely to be purchased and have a 35% increase in likelihood of being put into a shopping cart,” he said.
Publishers, too, are pleased with the effectiveness of the service. "We are seeing an expanded digital footprint for our catalog, increased press brand awareness, and easily accessed quality content in a variety of formats for our readers and for booksellers interested in shelving our titles—all of which drives sales and furthers audience engagement,” said Jayne Royal, editor-in-chief and publisher at Regal House.
Kelly Hannagan, senior digital manager for Johns Hopkins University Press, confirmed the stickiness of the “biblets” in keeping potential customers on the publisher’s site. "Since integrating this functionality, we have seen a remarkable surge of 350% in the duration spent on our book pages,” she said. Mary Barr of the Warbler Press added: "After creating and posting biblets for my entire list, my sales increased by ten percent in the first month."
To attract customers to the service, Bowker offers a variety of promotions, including free biblets for backlist books when the service is purchased for frontlist titles. The service is also available to self-publishers through Bowker's website.
