HC Launches Browse Inside Feature

by Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 2/26/2007

In what may be the most significant step by a major publisher to offer Web surfers deeper access to its titles, HarperCollins has launched a technology option that grants interior access to its books anywhere online. The new Browse Inside Widget takes the Browse Inside feature offered by HC on its home page and makes the option available for HC books anywhere they appear on the Web.

The technology allows anyone hosting a Web page—i.e., anyone with a Facebook, MySpace or other personal page—to feature HarperCollins titles with the added "browse inside" option. Web hosts simply click the option next to each title that says, "get this for your site." (The widget is available for all books in Harper's digital library—currently about 1,500—and will be on all the titles the house digitizes moving forward.)

While the widget doesn't include any buy links, HC group president Brian Murray said it will allow people to start sampling books online the way they've been sampling music. HC quietly rolled out the widget last week and the company has seeded it on various sites with selected titles in the hopes that it will spread virally. "How do you reach the MySpace and Facebook community? How do you market books to that [demographic]?" Murray opined. "The widget is the answer."

According to Murray, the widget is a perfect example of why the house has invested so heavily in digitizing its own books. "We want to distribute our books as widely as possible. With the widget we're able to put our books on all these common pages," he said, noting that without the widget, users could browse inside HC books only on Google and Amazon.

Leslie Hulse, v-p of global marketing and Internet strategy, added that the widget is easy to use. She said that the crowd uploading streaming audio and video clips to their own Web sites will immediately understand what the widget is and how to apply it on their sites.