Not Going Far Enough

Following on my unabashed DailyLit love, this announcement from HarperCollins sounds so 2006:

HarperCollins Publishers is pleased to launch Browse Inside for the Apple iPhone. Browse Inside digitally replicates the experience of browsing the pages of a book prior to purchasing.

Granted, I’m not a fan of the iPhone (I’ve already got my spam filter ready for your hate mail, so bring it), but regardless, this sounds pretty lame. They’re providing 10-page excerpts? Wow. I never would’ve thought that publishers could use the Internets to provide excerpts of books to readers. So revolutionary!

Doesn’t help that the list of available books is filled with suck, including Winning by Jack Welch & Suzy Welch and When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box
by John Ortberg.

Disagree if you will, but to me this is yet another example of a company trying to take advantage of a flashy new toy but simply doing the same old thing in a way that doesn’t really add anything to the reader/customer’s experience.