BEA eCatalog by Edelweiss
If you didn’t get to BEA, or even if you did and feel that you missed a few publishers, Edelweiss has created an online catalog of titles that were at the show. It’s worth checking out, if only to get a glimpse of the future of publishers catalogs.
The Edelweiss catalog offers several advantages over print. You can browse all the catalogs by genre, allowing you to look at all 332 cookbooks that were exhibited, and further letting you to narrow the search down to the 17 Vegetarian and Vegan books (hey, look at that, there’s a vegan book for “Latin Food Lovers”).
The GeoSearch tool (accessible from the tabs across the top) is a new function from Edelweiss, allowing you to find books related to your local area. I used it to discover that a new book on the Auburn Cord Duessenberg Racers is coming in October; it’s within driving distance of my former high school. This works with publishers full catalogs, too; get to them via the “Switch Market View” tab at the very top.
Under specific title pages, you will find publishing background you won’t find elsewhere. For instance, the first novel, Juliet, which was one of the picks for the librarian’s “Shout ‘n’ Share” program, will be getting quite a bit of promotion when it is released in August; clearly, the publisher has already invested heavily in it, as evidenced by this note:
HOT TITLE!: The talk of 2008’s Frankfurt Bookfair, this debut novel was preempted by Ballantine on the morning of what promised to be a highly competitive auction. Write-ups about the novel appeared in all the publishing press. Foreign rights were subsequently sold in twenty-nine territories.
Edelweiss also lets you see how the book is being discussed on Twitter and, if you register with Edelweiss, you can tag titles, to create lists accessible from the navigation bar at the top.
Hurry, though, the BEA listings will only be up through June 11th.