Blurb, the creative
publishing and marketing platform, today announced the launch of Blurb
BookShow, which enables authors to share their books in an
experiential format wherever they are online – on Facebook, their blog, a
web site, etc. Additionally, Blurb BookShow has been optimized for
viewing on the iPad, leveraging Apple’s multi-touch experience without
the need to download an application.
Blurb BookShow is an exciting new way for bookmakers to share
their work with their communities, enable their friends and fans to
easily pass the book along to others and drive interest in their printed
book. The highly engaging BookShow experience is similar to turning the
pages of a book as users can flip through the book’s pages online. On
the iPad, users can use the device’s touchpad to flick through the book
pages as well as pinch and zoom to enlarge images.
Bookmakers control how much of their books to share in Blurb
BookShow. BookShow is free to use, and has been designed to maximize the
potential for online sharing. Friends and fans can instantly share your
book via email or on their own blog, Facebook or Twitter pages by
clicking the "Share" button. They can also easily buy your book – the
"Buy" button directs to the author’s personal bookstore page at
Blurb.com.
"Authors are eager to share their stories," said Eileen
Gittins, founder and CEO, Blurb. "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."
Already, Blurb BookShow has proven to significantly increase
visibility, community engagement and sales for Blurb authors. During
beta testing, Blurb authors using Blurb BookShow experienced 6x more
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.
