Member associations, sales and marketing agencies, and book prizes can work with Exact Editions to use the Reading Rooms for Books platform to put together virtual book showcases to run alongside book fairs, book prizes, conferences, member events, author events, and awareness days.
Virtual book showcases allow these organisations to share one link to a multi-publisher display of books across their marketing channels, each with their own individual shop link attached, boosting both the profile of the organisation and the books involved.
Benefits of Virtual Book Showcases
1. Drive Book Sales
Publishers can choose shop links to re-direct users to for each book, shortening the sales funnel from browse to buy and helping to reach a much larger audience through a fully-searchable virtual display.
2. Boost Discoverability
A single link or QR code to the showcase can be integrated with the organisations, the publishers, and the authors digital and traditional marketing channels.
3. Retain Control of Content
The organisation chooses the period of time for which the books are accessible and decides whether titles are fully accessible or limited to previewable pages. The publisher’s decide the number of pages readers have access to at the front and back when they upload each book into the Reading Rooms for Books platform.
4. Improves Sustainability
We are all looking for more sustainable ways to create, distribute and promote content. Virtual showcases 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.
Recent Examples of Multi-Publisher Virtual Book Showcases
- The Orwell Prize Shortlists 2023: Virtual Book Showcase
The Orwell Foundation put together a virtual book showcase for The Orwell Prize 2023 book prizes: The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and The Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
Congratulations to the winners, The New Life by Tom Crewe (Chatto & Windus) and Show Me The Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen by Peter Apps (Oneworld).
Click here to preview, browse and search the shortlists (link will expire on 10th May 2024).
We decided to run a virtual book showcase as a way of offering readers the chance to dip into our shortlist — integrating it with our social media shortlist announcement, blogs posts sent our newsletter subscribers, and news posts on our website. As we’re often looking for ways to unify the finalists, we enjoyed how the virtual book showcase really made the books feel like a set.
James Tookey, Book Prize Administrator at The Orwell Prize
2. London Book Fair 2023: IPG Virtual Book Showcase
In a first for the Independent Publishers Guild, more than 20 publishers on the organisation’s collective stands at the London Book Fair 2023 took part in a virtual book showcase.
The IPG was pleased to work with Exact Editions on this project to help members showcase their books before, during and after the London Book Fair. Discoverability is a key issue for all publishers now, and the initiative was a good way for independents to get titles in front of current and prospective partners.
Bridget Shine, CEO of IPG
3. Ukraine Virtual Book Showcase
Exact Editions assembled and provided free access to a virtual book showcase of non-fiction books related to the history and culture of Ukraine in support of the Ukrainian people during these difficult times.
Click here to preview, browse and search the showcase (link will expire on 21st July 2024).
We are pleased to join the Ukraine Digital Books Collection, which shares free content on the history and culture of Ukraine. The aspiration to provide free access to knowledge that help readers understand how the past affects the present is one we strongly support.
Emily Poznanski, Director of CEU Press
4. COP26 Virtual Book Showcase
39 German, French and English-language publishers each provided four books in support of the UN 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26).
Click here to preview, browse and search the showcase (link will expire on 21st July 2024).
What an amazing collection of books about the climate emergency so well timed with #COP26 and including several landmark works by Elsevier.
Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee:
Interested in finding out more? Please contact readingrooms@exacteditions.com for more information.
Publishers can sign up to the free service of Reading Rooms for Books here, to begin uploading PDFs to create digital book preview links.
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