Above the Treeline is officially launching today its latest business intelligence tool for the book industry. Serendipity, like Edelweiss, is an interactive and Web-based tool for publishers and booksellers. While Edelweiss is a collection of digital catalogs from 30 companies representing 750 publishers and imprints, Serendipity has been developed specifically for small presses that aren’t large enough to need their own digital stand-alone catalogs, but still want to use Edelweiss to promote their titles.
“If they want to participate in Edelweiss, but have fewer than 10 titles, then Serendipity is an option,” explained Mark Evans, ATL’s marketing director, “”They can use all of Edelweiss’s features, they just don’t have their own Edelweiss catalog.” Publishers’ costs for Serendipity will be $20 per month for the first title and $10 per month for each additional title.
Serendipity will be a compilation digital catalog of all the titles from the small presses participating in the program. After title information is entered into Serendipity via ATL’s online entry wizard, the information will be accessible to Edelweiss’s 2,000-person end users via keyword search, a title-browsing function, and a “buzz” search. Publishers will be able to promote their title information via html formatted e-mails, hyperlinks, and PDFs, and can share title information via Facebook and Twitter. Title-specific alerts relating to author’s residence and biographical connections also will be automatically included in Edelweiss weekly updates sent to ATL’s 4,000-person e-mailing list, according to their own geographic location.
Evans compared Serendipity’s format to that of Books @ BEA, ATL’s live online catalog of frontlist titles displayed at this year’s show, in which 300 exhibitors participated.According to Evans, ATL selected “the best” of the releases listed by small presses on Books@ BEA, and transferred the title information over to Serendipity, so that there are already 425 titles from 80 publishers listed on Serendipity.
ATL also is developing digital companion catalogs for the regional bookseller trade shows this fall; for publishers to participate, they must subscribe to either Edelweiss or to Serendipity for at least a month. To get the word out about Serendipity, ATL is creating an affiliate program for independent booksellers, literary bloggers, and others, who, if they refer a small press to Serendipity, will receive a portion of the first month’s billing.
Serendipity may be viewed here.
