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Where to Use Book2Look Biblet and Add a Preview Book Option

Following a openday at Nielsen BookData where they introduced the Book2Look biblets (http://www.book2look.com) we immediately got some for our books. The Book2Look biblets are ‘the most advanced online marketing tool available for publishers’. We’d seen them before in the Nielsen newsletters but had initially thought the starter package of £150 for 5 was the price each and an annual price, but it wasn’t – it was a one-off price for the starter offer for a total of 5 biblets, once that was resolved we got them immediately and it is nice to be amongst the early adopters of a new tool.
We then had to decide exactly where we were going to use them. They give a book sample, as long a sample as you want, and incorporate links to shopping options, and to reviews. And they come with pre-generated QR codes. As well as giving give feedback options for reviews and comments and allow sharing and embedding options.

Examples of what the biblet looks like and how we’ve used the QR code – both link to here when selected http://book2look.com/book/ZrFHGPVxgR

Book2Look widget image for Inspector Hobbes and the Blood by Wilkie Martin
Click to read an extract
Read some of Inspector Hobbes and the Blood by Wilkie Martin now in the Book2Look book preview widget
Scan and open the link to get to the biblet and read an extract

This is a list of where we’ve used them so far:

  1. this website, on the individual books page
  2. this website, on the shop page as it offers other places to buy the book
  3. this website, on the home page with latest information
  4. on authors’ website, on the home page
  5. on authors’ website, on the book pages
  6. on authors’ blog posts
  7. on our twitter feed and author twitter feeds
  8. on authors goodreads profile
  9. in goodreads on book information pages
  10. in goodreads giveaway details
  11. in goodreads ads
  12. on our facebook page
  13. on author facebook pages
  14. in facebook ads
  15. on book pages on iauthor platform
  16. on leaflets as QR code
  17. on bookmarks as QR code
  18. inside print and ebook as link and/or QR code on ads for related books
  19. inside print and ebook as link to current book for sharing and comment options
  20. on netgalley promotion pages
  21. in news releases
  22. in press briefing documents
  23. provided to book bloggers
  24. in email texts
  25. our own blog posts

Example of how we used the QR code in the back pages of the books.

Example of Book2Look QR code and link for ebook

We’ve probably missed some, so we may add to this list when we think of them. The QR codes can be scanned from the QR image when it is displayed on e-readers or in print (in the book/leaflets etc).

Or here are some other places we’ve thought about but not tried yet:

  1. on t-shirts (promotional materials) as QR code
  2. on business cards as QR code
  3. in brochures as QR codes
  4. on banners, posters and dump-bins as QR codes
  5. on AI information sheets as QR codes
  6. in email signature blocks
  7. shelfari and other book websites
  8. in author profiles on other websites (provided the site doesn’t have its own options for previewing the book)
  9. in ebook metadata

If you have other suggestions for good places to use them then please let us know.

Nielsen are hoping to eventually incorporate them into the data they supply to bookshops so that it gives these shops the preview options.

For more information on Book2Look see the Nielsen website http://www.nielsenbookdata.co.uk/controller.php?page=88

Originally posted to wordpress.com on 13 November 2014.

Definitions

AI – advance information sheet, sent to bookshops

biblet – the Book2Look widget

dump-bin – book/series/publisher specific display stands

metadata – collection of data that describes a book (author, description, title, genre etc)

QR – quick response code. Scan with camera in mobile and go to direct to the linked website (via QR code reader)

iauthor, shelfari, netgalley – websites

Nielsen – the helpful ISBN and bookdata people

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Success Creating Our First Book2Look Biblet

We wanted a nice widget to show off our book content, and have now successfully created our first one using the book2look website (http://book2look.com).

It was pretty easy to do but we had a couple of false starts as we’d not quite got all the information together, and also hadn’t realized we needed to publicize the biblet before we could then go back and edit it.

Create a book2look site logon. We got ours through Nielsen (http://www.nielsenbookdata.co.uk).

Setup your company profile with website links etc.

Decide which of the shop links you want to appear and in what order before creating the biblet as, unless you want to publish it mid-construction, you need all the information ready to pop into the create screen:

  1. pdf of the interior as single pages plus jpg of the cover and/or the epub file
  2. the page numbers of the pages you want to include in look inside
  3. the title, author, categories, tags, and long description for the book
  4. short twitter text
  5. isbn and asin numbers
  6. and all the links to the shops you want to set up
  7. plus if you have them any video and audio files
  8. and links to any websites with reviews of the book

We have a few updates to do to it for review and for ebook files and links, but are quite pleased with how it looks so far.

Only disappointment is the widgets are created as iframes and we can’t directly include them on our WordPress website pages or posts, but we can include them on websites, or include them as hyperlinks on a screen shot which is nearly as good.

The widget includes social media buttons and also allows some reporting on usage and spread, which we hope to be interesting.

http://book2look.com/vBook.aspx?id=ZrFHGPVxgR

Slightly disappointed that the shop options don’t change by displayed country – but maybe that will come as it is an evolving biblet. A preview option would also have been nice as you don’t know what it looks like until you publish it, as would an option to change the displayed page numbers without restarting the process.

We’ll give this one a couple of days to bed in before we go ahead and build the next one.

Originally posed on our wordpress.com site on 27 June 2014.

We still use the Nielsen Book2Look widget for new books and to give the ‘look-inside’ option on websites, in print books and on promotion material. We’ve kept them upto date when covers have changed and to add new material for audiobooks and new videos. We have, though, removed all the shop links from them all though.
Look out for the regular promotions from Nielsen for blocks of Book2Look widgets at reduced prices.