The Book Widgets

HarperCollins and Random House

Speaking of nerdy widgets, HarperCollins and Random House just came out with their own book widgets while I slept. 

Both widgets allow you to read and search books, but the Random House widget is the clear winner for its self-contained design. Contrast it with the clunkier HarperCollins one.

For a good example, check out the widget for Random House’s Meta Math by Gregory Chaitin. My only gripe is they should make these things easier to find on their site by putting them all in one place.

7 Comments

  1. they are pretty nifty.

    Posted by kristen on 28 Feb 2007 at 3:49 pm
  2. Not sure how I feel about how shiny and self-contained these are. You should be able to make a widget look like it *really* belongs on your site.

    Posted by lauren on 01 Mar 2007 at 10:20 pm
  3. Hey hey,

    I’m reaching out from AdaptiveBlue to introduce you to a few of our widgets – a large number of authors and book lovers have started using our widgets to promote books on their sites.

    You can see more here: http://blog.adaptiveblue.com/?p=819

    Or check out our widget gallery for top book lists from Amazon and New York Times by clicking the link attached to my name above.

    If anyone has any questions on this please contact me directly, fraser [dot] kelton [at] gmail [dot] com.

    Posted by Fraser on 28 Dec 2007 at 3:18 pm
  4. Thanks Fraser. That is indeed an impressive widget gallery.

    Posted by Sean on 28 Dec 2007 at 8:23 pm
  5. Agree. The Random House one is much better.

    Posted by Miriam H on 19 Oct 2008 at 4:31 pm
  6. Hi,

    I’d like to introduce you to ipublishcentral.

    Our technology enables publishers, both large and small, to have equally rich widgets like the Random House and Harper Collins ones – without spending too much time and money in creating them.

    We launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year and have since had more than 150 publishers register with us to get their book widgets.

    You can check out some sample widgets at our gallery page http://www.ipublishcentral.com/gallery.php

    You can reach us at info [at] ipublishcentral [dot] com

    Posted by Ulhas on 01 Apr 2009 at 4:28 am
  7. A simple, minimalistic book widget is BookBox, at:
    http://www.sharebookbox.com

    It is not as fancy as some of the others, but it requires no registration and it can be created in a minute.

    (disclaimer: I’m the author of BookBox)

    Posted by laszlo on 23 Nov 2009 at 9:49 am

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