Technology that understands why we pick up books

Their tagline is "social book discovery," and much of their pitch as a social media service for authors is about how they can help authors better utilize social media to promote books. I think they're right, but I think the most compelling thing about Bublish is the place they shine the spotlight: on quotes from books.

In the realm of new technologies for writers, most of them focus on how a new piece of software can help a writer create, edit, publish, or market a new book. The vast majority of those new technologies are involved in the process of doing one or more of those things. And that's to be expected- there are many areas to smooth out and democratize the publishing process for self-publishers.

What Bublish does, though, is parse content. It's content marketing in its purest form. Using specific content to reach a specific audience to influence a particular behavior.

Bublish is a service that enables authors to share out single quotes from their books. They call these quotes "Bubbles" from the book. Hence the name. The idea is that if someone is intrigued by the quote, that reader will click through and read a little more, and, if sufficiently hooked, continue on through to purchase the book. It's the sales funnel applied to book marketing in a very content-focused and creative way.

As I said, the most intriguing part to me is that Bublish has innovated with the content of a book. In the age of social media, a quote is pretty much what fits in tweets and/or facebook. And it's frequently more compelling than the title or a summary of the book.

Businesses offer free whitepapers or blog posts to give potential clients a taste of how they think and what they do. Movies offer trailers with great quotes and awesome visual effects. Musicians offer samples of a song.

But until now, books had to offer a cover photo, a summary, or maybe a recommendation from someone. I'm excited to see how well this innovation grows.

What do you think?

Image courtesy of Bublish homepage screenshot