websites

I agree with Nancy that Simon & Schuster has done a good job with its website, as it appealed to the end user looking to buy books, as well as teachers and librarians searching for lesson plans and supplemental materials.

I liked the website for Chronicle Books a little more, particularly for their organization of children’s books by age categories (I also noted a further division of YA literature from its standard 12-18 age bracket, which is often too large. This publisher has subdivided the books into 12-14 as “Advanced” and 15-18 as “Young Adult”). I thought Chronicle Books did a thorough job of thinking about what their users would want, especially targeting readers and individual book buyers. When a user clicks on a book, several things display on the page without making it appear overly crowded: a link to buy the book, a summary, related titles/recommended reads, and a link to customer reviews. I think that the average reader would care more about customer reviews than critics’ reviews, as most consumers are prone to choosing their books based on entertainment and sentimental values rather than literary merit. I also like the simple layout of the authors’ and illustrators’ bios, each with a link to the author’s own website. The video library was a neat addition, too—I watched a few animated children’s books. I assume these videos are meant to target the parents, not necessarily the children, because although a child would probably enjoy them, I can’t imagine how a child would find him/herself on that website without the direction of a parent. By design, this website really doesn’t appeal to children, which I think is intentional, as the publisher doesn’t need to attract the attention of the children (the press can leave that job to the websites of illustrators and children’s book authors).

With the same website, I do have a couple criticisms. The “kids contests” page was not working, and under “author events”, nothing was posted. Also, maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t quite get the point of podcasting. Was there supposed to be visual feed as well? I was not engaged with only audio feed (the narrator on Episode 47, the narrator introduced an interview with author Noah Holly, “poolside”, which seems an unimportant detail without visual media). Maybe it would have more appeal if they had a sample reading of a chapter.