S&S has developed an author widget that will display information on all the books of an S&S author, and is using its recently launched business Web site, simonandschuster.biz, to distribute the software. The widget displays an author’s entire catalogue of S&S titles, starting with the author’s most recent books. The author widget is described as easy to install on any Web site and is designed for use by authors, agents, fans, bloggers, and social networking sites. It also allows its users to link to retail sites and earn referral fees from sales.
Ellie Hirschhorn, executive v-p and chief digital officer at S&S, called the author widget “a one-stop digital tool,” and said it is part of S&S’s strategy to “facilitate e-commerce wherever consumers may be online by enlisting our authors as partners in the effort to create that all-important buzz.”
The author widget was developed in a partnership with GetGlue, a social recommendation engine. The author widget offers a brief description of the book, reviews, and reader rankings, and it is automatically updated with new information about the author. More information about grabbing and embedding the widget into a Web site can be found at the S&S Business Web site.
