Edelweiss eCatalogs' Many Features on Display

Edelweiss, the interactive, online catalog platform from Above the Treeline, drew booksellers and other book industry professionals eager for a preview to Friday and Saturday sessions at BookExpo America and to the company's booth on the trade show floor. The new platform works across participating publishers, so users need learn only one system that gives them the ability to manage multiple catalogs easily in a single online library. For booksellers, publicists, bloggers, agents, and other catalog end users, access to Edelweiss is free.

At the BEA demonstrations, John Rubin, Above the Treeline founder and CEO, emphasized, "Edelweiss continually updates. [When a publisher] prints a catalog, it's out-of-date by the time it's published. We also wanted to reduce the environmental impact of printing and mailing thousands of catalogs each season, and help improve a sales force's effectiveness."

On the retail side, Rubin continued, store book buyers "can view dynamic, enriched content about new titles; they can search, sort, tag, and filter titles easily; and efficiently integrate orders and bibliographic information into their point of sale system." He added: "We wanted to put enough features so that retailers are excited about [using it]."

For times when booksellers feel the need to have something in print, Edelweiss allows them to create a PDF of catalog entries, which can be easily printed.

A new feature that was unveiled just before BEA is the Internet Buzz Activity, which allows users to find out what titles are being discussed in the virtual world, such as in blogs and on Twitter.

In addition, at BEA, Rubin told session attendees that an Edelweiss prototype iPhone application was currently in the testing phase.

Edelweiss currently features an account management component that allows publisher reps to mark-up a catalog for one or more accounts, and plans are in development to allow stores to utilize this same functionality for their customers sometime in the future.

Rubin told BTW that he hopes booksellers will find Edelweiss useful for a number of reasons. For one, he said, there's "the POS integration. One bookseller buyer noted that what used to take three days took her only five minutes with Edelweiss," he explained. An additional benefit is "just being able to quickly search for titles you want" by keyword.

Above the Treeline subscribers are also able "to view their own sales and inventory history on comparable titles when using Edelweiss, which will help inform their buying decisions.

Rubin stressed that booksellers can register with Edelweiss and use the eCatalogs for free.

Publishers currently working with Edelweiss for the fall season are Random House; Penguin; HarperCollins; Hachette; Workman; Chronicle; Diamond Books; Cambridge University Press; Columbia University Press; Georgetown University Press; Ingram Publisher Services (representing multiple publishers); Microsoft Press; and Thomas Nelson. And more publishers are expected to sign on soon.

Booksellers will have another opportunity to see how Edelweiss eCatalogs work at each of the regional trade shows this fall.

For more information on Edelweiss, read this interview with Rubin by Mark Nichols, ABA's senior director of publisher initiatives. --David Grogan