After years of fretting and wondering about the viability and workability of e-books, two of America's major publishers are taking a big step toward letting book fans browse by computer:
The dusty world of book publishing has taken a step into cyberspace as Random House and HarperCollins let customers browse books online.
Random House, whose writers include Danielle Steel and Norman Mailer, said on Tuesday it will let consumers search and browse through more than 5,000 of its titles on the Internet through a new service called Insight.
Random House is also introducing a tool allowing users to add material from titles to personal pages on social networks such as MySpace or to a retailer's Web site.
And damned if they didn't. I went to Random House and poked around the "Insight Browse & Search" section of their online catalog. Thousands of titles there for perusal. Here's an example: the first 42 pages of Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning:
Not bad. I wish there was some button that would let potential readers know to click the book image to enlarge it, but other than that, it's a slick interface.
I'd never want to read a whole book like this, but it seems like a great way to discover new authors or check out the new work of old favorites.
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