Our launch of the big BUZZ BOOKS 2013 free ebook sampler has gotten nice attention all over, from the AP and USA Today to Bookselling 
This Week and lovely tweets from all over. (Special thanks to Washington Post critic Ron Charles and booksellers Emily Gould and Ami Greko among the tweets we’ve spotted so far.) If downloading a free ebook is a little too much commitment for you, we’ve also posted the entire book in a online reading widget, courtesy of Firebrand and Book2Look. (And that widget can be embedded elsewhere if you wish.) In a similar vein, USA Today excerpted our excerpt from Therese Anne Fowler’s March release Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.
With really substantial excerpts from almost 30 forthcoming spring and summer books, it’s a great way to get a taste of some of the season’s biggest discoveries–starting will 11 authors who will be appearing at the ABA’s Winter Institute later this year (NoViolet Bulawayo; Lily Koppel; Anthony Marra; Tom McNeal; Philipp Meyer; Roth Ozeki; Cathie Pelletier; Benjamin Percy; Laura Lee Smith; Kent Wascom and Helen Wecker).
Buzz Books 2013: Spring/Summer helps trade readers and consumers and book lovers discover some great new books on the way soon, and is a win for everyone involved. Plus Sarah Weinman’s detailed overview of the entire season highlights over 100 other titles to look out for. We do this to help, to experiment and to learn. (This time around we’re trying a shorter version for international distribution around the world as well.) Please help spread the word to anyone interested.
Interestingly, we took a look at the distribution for last year’s first version, release right before BEA, and found that the “market share” for our free ebook looked a lot like the marketplace overall. Among consumer downloads, 58 percent were on Kindle; 27 percent on Nook; 12 percent through the iBookstore; and 2.2 percent were on Sony’s platform.