What UK book publishers are (not) doing online

When I go to a bookshop, I scan the shelves for the black spines of the Penguin Classics range, knowing that I will probably like anything in that series. With travel books, the distinctive Lonely Planet coloured spines are another safe bet. When I visit second hand book fairs, I am always secretly on the lookout for Ladybird books. Online, however, I have never visited a UK publisher's website and I don't know anyone who seeks them out more than once (even once is generous). I have a lot of goodwill towards some of these publishers, but they don't give me much of a venue online to pour my goodwill onto...

What are the major UK publishers (i.e. names that sounded familiar to me from this list) doing online? Not a lot. Most of them have moved online to sell books, which is fine but a bit unimaginative. Sell books online, by all means, but beyond that, UK publishers are not taking advantage of three basic opportunities:

1. The social network elements of reading, that have long preceded the internet. A number of startups are trying to succeed in this space (some of these I got from James Cridland): Shelfari, AllConsuming, anobii, GoodReads and LibraryThing. Some publishers do have readers' group websites which range from decent (Penguin) to just holding pages but none has gone further.
2. Notably, given how little UK children's content there is on television, there is very little that UK publishers offer children online (children are avid consumers of advanced online content, so two screensavers and some ecards do not good children's content make). From publishers such as Bloomsbury, Puffin and Dorling Kindersley, that is disappointing (the latter two have made a bit of an effort, but nothing given that they should be huge online children's brands).
3. The content itself! Other than John Wiley and Penguin, UK publishers seem very reluctant to put the content of their books online, even the books that are no longer within copyright. If you don't want to make the book itself available, what about all the content that goes round it? Maps, quotations, explanation of places, detailed biographies of the authors, audiobook podcasts ... I could list so many things, because books are such a fun area! It doesn't need to be complicated - think of the Gutenberg Project's wonderful texts in their rudimentary formats.

Here are the highlights (no one gets credit for standard ecommerce features or difficult-to-find microsites). Only Penguin and John Wiley & Sons acquit themselves well.

Bloomsbury

• A lame Harry Potter website and a lamer children's book section.
• A special interactive section which I imagine was cutting edge in 1999.

Bloodaxe

• Basic book descriptions.
• Interactive magazine/book guide which is cool but useless in adding value beyond what HTML could do. I hope they got this as a freebie from the software vendor rather than paid for it.
• Poetry videos. Nothing too fancy but very much what such a small publisher with poetry content should do.

Cambridge University Press

• Basic book descriptions.

Dorling Kindersley

• Some "look inside" stuff.
• Some interesting clip art - there may be intellectual property issues here but surely they could have done a lot better.

Faber

• Nothing.

Folio Society

• Some glimpses of "look inside" but nothing too complicated. Not that one would expect more from a club selling expensive books to people who like to touch and smell their books.

Hamlyn

• Nothing.

Harper Collins

• Cheap-to-implement features such as book charts, "other books you may like", staff picks and tags elevate the basic book descriptions into a more attractive package, slightly closer to an actual community.
• Readers' Corner, an online panel for soliciting reader feedback about books.

John Wiley & Sons

• Interscience. Over 5,000 books online for free, mainly of an academic bent. For example Adhesives and Adhesive Tapes or Advances in Chemical Physics (no prizes for guessing whether I clicked past the letter "A") .
• Frommers.Decent travel content, nothing revolutionary, but solid. Good enough to attract the book's loyal offline readers (including me).
• Dummies. Basic. Some articles in a style reminiscent of About.com.
• CliffsNotes. Excellent resource, although mainly targeted at US students.
• Blackwell has basic features such as look at a book's table of contents.

Methuen

• Nothing.

Mills & Boon

• Nothing.

Open University Press

• Nothing

Oxford University Press

• Some apparently good online subscription services for librarians, but nothing very booky and nothing for normal people.
• The OUP blog has some quizzes and interactive features but overall a bit lame.

Penguin

• Downloadable first chapters of the latest Penguins.
• Experimental microsite using innovative online technologies to tell stories.
• Podcast and a good blog.
• Good readers' group website.
• Discussion forums for Penguin Classics although with very few entries.
• Ladybird Books has limited resources for educators and children (including small games). Not bad were it not for the high expectations I had of Ladybird.
• Puffin Books has some microsites, a very few games and some other interactive features.

Usborne

• Some microsites for children and an interesting collection of URLs that are referenced in Usborne educational books.

Comments

[Tom Loosemore]

Interesting, particularly the lack of ambition wrt kids content and out of copyright texts - just see http://www.PepysDiary.com for what *can* be done with the latter (in someone's spare time...)

[Gigiuk]

I think a lot of publisher's interesting sites are outside of their main marketing/ecommerce sites. Dorling Kindersley has www.traveldk.com which has the content from their travel guides available online and lets you create your own bespoke travel guide to share with the community, print at home or print professionally.

Plus www.eyewitness.dk.com, a content site for schools available through subscription is making headway in the education market both in the UK and US.