THE STORY BEHIND BOOKBUZZR

It was a dark, stormy night ...

Ummm ... actually, it was a bright sunny morning. Birds (mainly a few crows) were chirping (or crowing) in the yard of my home ... trying hard to get heard over the drone of automobiles to their potential mates.

And I was having a stimulating conversation with a good friend of mine - Chetan Dhruve - author of the international sleeper-hit book, "Why Your Boss is Programmed to be a Dictator." Chetan was ruing the lack of support for authors from publishers when it comes to marketing their books online. He'd been doing all of the Internet marketing for his book which included creating a website and trying to drive traffic to the site. He gave a variation of the old advertising industry lament "I know that 50% of my efforts are getting wasted. Problem is ... I don't know which 50%." And I asked the magical question: "If you could wave a magic wand and get the ultimate online, book-marketing tool, what would you want it to do for you?"

"Well, first of all, I'd want to provide an excerpt of my book to visitors of my site." said Chetan.

"But Chetan, don't you already have an excerpt of the book on your site? Don't most author sites and blogs have an excerpt section?"

"Yes. But what I want is for my book-excerpt to show up like the pages of a real book. I want the pages to turn like a real book."

Intrigued, I said "Go on. What else would you want in your dream, online book-marketing tool?"

"Hmmm ... I want the online version of my book to smell like a real book ...but maybe I'm asking for too much!" said Chetan laughing.

"Seriously speaking ...", continued Chetan, "I want a book-widget that will replace the boring static book-cover image on my blog and author site. And I want to go where the traffic is actually going. I want information about my book to turn up on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Digg, Linked-in, Blogger etc."

By now, I'd grabbed a piece of paper and started making notes.

"And I want my fans to be able to share my book-widget on their own blogs, Facebook profiles or websites with just one or two clicks."

"You're asking for a portable author website!" I exclaimed.

"Yup. A portable author website in the form of an embeddable book-widget that's shareable across multiple social networks. And with book-pages that look and act like pages from a real book."

That was the beginning of this journey. In a few months, my team of software developers (I own another software business) had developed the first version of BookBuzzr. We tried it with Chetan's book and embedded it on his site. Visitors to Chetan's site loved it. Some of Chetan's other author friends asked where they could get the widget. It was unlike any other book-marketing tool out there. Almost by accident (or perhaps by magic) we'd built the most advanced online book-marketing technology on the Internet.

By now, realizing the massive pain that authors have for marketing their books online, we decided to price the product at zero dollars. That's right! We decided to give away the tool for free. And adoption took off. Hundreds of authors began putting up their books in BookBuzzr format. The Alexa rank for our site (a measure of website popularity) increased exponentially in just a few short weeks. And we're probably at the beginning (and the center) of a revolution in online book-marketing.

Our vision is to have every book ever published to be available in BookBuzzr format. Towards this end, we've made our technology really simple and easy to use. Anybody can use it. Even authors :) But it's also really powerful. As an example, Chetan's book which has been embedded on his own website has received thousands of views. A number of visitors who would otherwise have clicked out of the site have clicked on the full-screen view of the book and perused the sample pages offered.

If you're an author or publisher, you've come to the right place. BookBuzzr is one of the most comprehensive online, book-marketing technologies out there. We're constantly adding new features in a race with ourselves to build a technology that will help your books fly out of book-stores. Get BookBuzzr. It's useful. It engages your fans. It encourages word-of-mouth (or click-of-mouse) conversations around your book. It's simple to use. And it's free. Most of all, it gives your readers the authentic book-reading experience :)

Enjoy.

Vikram Narayan
Founder
BookBuzzr.com and fReado.com
Free, Online Book-Marketing Technology for Authors