Blurb has
announced the launch of their Blurb BookShow, a preview feature enabling authors to share their books in a showcase format on Facebook, Twitter, their blog, a web site, and many other social media networks allowing third-party programs. Blurb has become a very popular option for self-publishers, micro-publishers, photographers and artists to publish good quality colour illustrated books as well as standard black and white text-only books. The launch of Blurb Bookshow is a freeware tool allowing publishers to share books with their online communities, as well as being a tool for promotion and sales of their printed books. In additional, Blurb BookShow has also been optimized for viewing on the iPad without the need to download an application.
Users will be able to flip through the book’s pages online and the on the iPad, users can use the device’s touch-pad to flick through the book pages as well as pinch and zoom to enlarge images. Authors publishing books with Blurb will be able to control how much of the book to share in the Blurb BookShow. BookShow is free to use, and has been designed to maximize the potential for online sharing. The Blurb Bookshow features a 'Buy' button which will direct a potential customer to the author or publisher's Blurb storefront.
“Authors are eager to share their stories. Blurb BookShow makes an author’s book more discoverable, more exciting to experience and drives interest in the printed book. We know that some of our customers will use BookShow to simply share their work with friends and family, and that’s great. Other Blurb authors will take advantage of BookShow to share and sell their books among their communities. Whatever the intention for sharing, we are incredibly excited to help our customers facilitate a deeper level of engagement with their friends and fans.”
Eileen Gittens, CEO and founder of Blurb
Blurb have been carrying out tests using Blurb Bookshow with some of their authors and they say in many cases authors reported a six-fold increase in visits to their bookstore pages compared to the control group who did not use Blurb BookShow. The Blurb BookShow test group also saw an 88% increase in book sales compared to the control group. The test and control group during beta testing was comprised of over 25,000 users enrolled in the Blurb Set Your Own Price program. The control group utilized Blurb’s existing online marketing tools while the test group utilized Blurb BookShow. The beta test period ran from 4 March – 6 April 2010.
To view an example of Blurb BookShow, click
here.
To see Blurb Bookshow on the iPad, click
here.
Mick Rooney – Publishing Consultant
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Blurb Launch Online Bookshow Widget
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