Watch out, webbies, the dinosaurs of publishing are out to win back some of their readers.
In a belated response to the success of online booksellers in enticing customers to websites such as Amazon, two leading publishers have launched features that allow customers to browse through books online.
Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of I Am Not Myself These Days, told trade journal the Book Standard that the facility "is today's equivalent of picking up a book off of a friend's coffee table and glancing through it".
A look at the feature on both sites shows that readers can access front and back covers, title pages and the first few pages of the first two chapters. The experience, although undeniably technologically impressive, is slightly less engaging than picking up a book and leafing through it. The future of the coffee table, unlike that of traditional publishing, is probably assured for a few more years.
The move by Random House and HarperCollins means that readers can leaf through works by thousands of authors including established writers such as Toni Morrison, John Grisham, Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton, and newcomers including Sophie Kinsella, author of the bestselling Confessions of a Shopaholic. Random House's Insight feature will give access to the works of 5,000 of the company's titles.
Both companies say that the feature will soon allow readers to post book excerpts on their personal pages on social networking sites such as MySpace. HarperCollins is part of the News Corp empire owned by Rupert Murdoch. The company also owns MySpace.
While both companies launched the features this week, they lag behind established online retailers. Amazon launched its book browsing function in 2003, and Google has offered the same feature since 2005.
Nevertheless the publishers are showing that they can get to grips with the jargon of the online world, eschewing the elegant prose that may have helped them make millions.
"The Browse Inside widget is the most recent marketing tool we have developed using the capabilities of our digital warehouse to market our titles to the MySpace generation online," Brian Murray, group president for HarperCollins, said in a statement.
"We are extending out reach beyond the HarperCollins site to where many potential book buyers visit - on social communities, blogs or author sites."
