The Random House Group Transforms Book Browsing Online

LONDON, April 14/PRNewswire/ --

- Play.com, Lovereading Ltd, BookRabbit and Gardners to Roll Out the
Widget to Customers

The Random House Group has become the first UK publishing group to
develop an application which will enable consumers to browse and search
through sections of books online - just as they would in a bookshop.

Through the new 'widget' consumers can read key passages of writing,
search inside the text, and purchase the book directly via a 'buy now
button'. The tool is simple to install and can be customised to suit the
design of any site, thus enabling its quick uptake on a variety of sites.

Online retailer Play.com, book wholesalers Gardners and book community
websites Lovereading.co.uk and BookRabbit.com will all be adding customised
versions of the widget to their sites in the next few weeks. The widget,
which is the first of its kind in the UK, is designed to be easily added, so
bloggers and small site owners can host the device too.

The widget is now available on the Group's website rbooks.co.uk, and will
be rolled out across all Group sites in the next few months. There are
currently more than 500 titles available to view in this way, and the Group
is aiming to have more than 5000 titles, from a mix of genres, available by
the end of the year.

Books that are available to view with the widget have 'open this book'
written on the book jacket image. Titles currently available include last
year's Booker Prize winner The Gathering
(http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=0099501635) by Anne Enright, My
Sister Jodie (http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=0385610122) by
children's author Jacqueline Wilson and Birdsong
(http://www.rbooks.co.uk/product.aspx?id=0099387913) by Sebastian Faulks.

Widgets are also now available for more than half of Sebastian Faulks'
books on his new author site - http://www.sebastianfaulks.com. Sebastian
Faulks commented: "The Random House Group widget is fantastic, a really
brilliant device. The best widget since the original one in the draught
Guinness can."

Peter Bowron, Group Managing Director, The Random House Group said:
"We're making the widget available to everyone, whether they are a retailer,
author, blogger, online book community or book enthusiast. Our overall goal
is to spread widgets as far and wide across the internet as possible."

James Bruce, Marketing Manager Music & Books, Play.com, added: "The
widget is highly innovative marketing tool that will bring a number of
benefits to our customers, so we are delighted to be adding it to our site.
Allowing visitors to browse our books and 'try before they buy' really
enriches the Play.com online shopping experience."

The launch of the widget follows a succession of digital initiatives
developed by the Random House Group over the last year. These include: the
creation of a digital warehouse which will store every book written by a
Random House Group author both past and present; marketing activity on Second
Life, MySpace and Bebo; the launch of rbooks.co.uk and the appointment of an
eBook Manager and Digital Communications Manager.

About The Random House Group

The Random House Group is one of the largest general book publishing
companies in the UK. The Group is based in London with subsidiary companies
in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.The Group comprises six
publishing companies with over 40 diverse and highly respected imprints and
brand-name publishers including BBC Books, Jonathan Cape, William Heinemann,
Chatto & Windus, Vintage, Corgi, Doubleday, Bantam Press and Virgin Books.

Novelists published by the Group include Dan Brown, Jilly Cooper, John
Grisham, Andy McNab, Chris Ryan, Robert Harris, Mark Haddon, Ian McEwan,
Martin Amis and Terry Pratchett. Random House's non-fiction publishing
consists of broad general non-fiction and specialist categories such as
cookery, gardening, travel and business books. Notable authors of non-fiction
include, Bill Bryson, Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith. The Group's classic
backlist of over 6000 titles includes the works of Graham Greene, Iris
Murdoch and Virginia Woolf amongst others. Random House Children's Books
publishes many bestselling writers including Philip Pullman and Jacqueline
Wilson, the former Children's Laureate.

The Random House Group distribution business services its own imprints as
well as 50 other UK publishers.

Source: The Random House Group

For more information, please contact: Catherine McMahon, Group Communications Manager, The Random House Group, T: +44(0)20-7840-8827, M: +44(0)7779-591894, E: cmcmahon@randomhouse.co.uk

2008-04-13 19:02:59 0334264 PRNEWSWIRE