Bowker Adds Bookwraps to Bookseller Data Feeds

Posted on August 23, 2002

R.R. Bowker, a publisher of bibliographic information, announced that it is making available Bookwraps to the content on its data feeds. Bookwraps are Web-based book commercials that combine streaming video and audio, book metadata and author biographical information. They are produced by Bookstream Inc., a multimedia company providing online video promotion tools to booksellers.

"Bowker is pleased to offer this extraordinary new technology to the custom data feeds that we provide to major customers such as Barnes & Noble, Border's, The Strand Book Store and Advanced Book Exchange (ABE), as well as comparative shopping services such as BookFinder.com and AllBookstores.com," said Michael Cairns, president of New Providence, N.J.-based R.R. Bowker. "Bookwraps are basically multimedia book jackets that contain all of the information of a print jacket, but do so in an interactive manner, complete with author video clips. We believe they are the next dimension in Web-based book marketing because they allow publishers to promote their titles in a much more dynamic and cost-effective manner."

According to Cairns, Bowker is in the process of contacting its major retail customers who use Bowker's custom data feeds to make Bookwraps available to them. The company will also be deploying the multimedia content on its booksinprint.com and globalbooksinprint.com websites later this year.

"Bowker is a major source of high quality book information in the industry, through products like Books In Print and their data feeds," said Charles Halpin, Director, Bookstream Inc. "This agreement will make Bookwraps available to infinitely more consumers now as a regular book marketing feature, providing consumers with the richness of author video clips when making their book selections. We are delighted to be working with them."

Some of the authors who have conducted interviews for Bookwraps features include: Jean Auel, author of the bestselling Earth's Children series; Bob Kerrey, former U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate; Orson Scott Card, award-winning and bestselling science fiction writer; and Meg Cabot, author of the popular Princess Diaries novels.