Five benefits of digital showcases for independent publishers

 

From conferences and book fairs to email marketing campaigns and social media posts, digital showcases can help book publishers promote their titles alongside each other in collections.  

Exact Editions’ ‘Reading Rooms for Books’ tool displays books in their original print formats, laid out side by side on a clean, ad-free platform on which readers can browse and buy. Here are five big benefits of showcase technology like this.

1. Drive sales and book fair audiences

Promoting books through digital showcases is vitally important in an increasingly digital landscape. For book fairs and conferences, it’s easy to enhance displays of print books with a single link to a digital showcase. These offer individual shop links for each title, shortening the sales funnel from browse to buy, and help publishers reach a much wider audience than through a physical event—beforehand, during and afterwards.

2. Improve discoverability

Collections built using ‘Reading Rooms for Books’ benefit from a powerful search function that facilitates complex searches for specific key words or topics across titles and collections—something that is impractical in their print counterparts. Books’ appeal can be further strengthened by displaying them next to complementary titles, showing the full range and value of your content in a specific series or certain genre.

3. Tailored promotions

Digital showcases let you retain control over exactly when, where, how and amongst which other titles your books are promoted. You can choose the time period for which books are accessible and decide whether titles are fully accessible or limited to certain previewable pages. Publishers can also name, edit and collate multiple (sub) collections to build even larger collections of books that are easily navigable and split into clear-cut sections. They are only available when you decide to publicise. The links can’t be found by anyone accidentally, and are GDPR and privacy compliant.

4. Flexibility 

Digital showcases can be accessed through either singular links or downloadable QR codes, and are completely flexible in terms of the platform on which they are deployed. Here are some examples of the digital media you can use to promote collections of books: 

You can target different audiences simultaneously, giving everyone access at the click of a button.

5. Sustainability

We are all looking for more sustainable ways to create, distribute and promote content. There is no doubt that the publishing industry requires structural change, highlighted by the International Publishers’ Association SDG Publishers Compact

Using digital showcases contributes towards a more sustainable model of promotion, both economically and for the health of the planet. They bypass the carbon cost of printing, wrapping and transporting books to events; do not need to be stored physically, saving energy costs; and are only accessible on-demand, avoiding waste. 

Publishers can generate fully-searchable previews of individual books for free by signing up here. For more about Exact Editions, visit its website.

An open-access book collection, created by Exact Editions’ ‘Reading Rooms for Books’ tool. Click here to browse the collection before the end of 2022.