(publishingperspectives.com): For a long while now publishers have released sample chapters online to give readers a sense of what a book might be like. You can have them e-mailed to you, download them, or browse for them on the Web. Then there’s Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature and others that allow you to “browse” the flaps and opening of a book, much like you might do at a bookstore. Unfortunately, argues Kevin Smokler, it isn’t working. He advocates that publishers come up with a small, format neutral sample — something akin to a music MP3 single: cheap, portable and, hopefully, catchy. What that might look like remains to be seen.
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