Online Book Browsing

Book publishers like Random House and HarperCollins are using a new service called Insight to post up more than 5000 of its books on the Internet. These companies are hoping that the ability to browse various titles online will raise interest in books and drive people to read more of the books it publishes. They are also adding a feature that allows people to add information to their profiles on social networking sites. It looks like these publishers are trying to increase their revenue by delving deep into the market where young people are most likely to be. It's better for people to be reading books even if they are doing this electronically, and I think this move to post up more books for preview can help boost revenue and interest in book reading. It enables people to preview many different kinds of books and if they find it interesting, they can buy the book to read the whole thing. When searching for books on Amazon.com, I came across a book that was not required for a class, but after reading the first few pages I found it interesting enough to buy so there is a good chance this marketing scheme can work well. I am under the impression that this move by Random House and HarperCollins will provide more comprehensive and numerous previews of books than on Amazon.com, for example, where limited previews are available.