Stuart worked for Solaris Media to Art Direct and design a book widget for Random House. The widget is a book viewer that can be embedded onto a webpage which allows the user to browse titles and read sample chapters. The widget also display basic bibliographic information on the title, related title recommendations, send to a friend function, add to my site control, content searching and a configurable buy button.

There are thousands of Random House titles that have these book viewing widgets available. By the end of 2008 Random House expect this to be up to 5,000, with a widget available for the vast majority of all new publishing frequently weeks ahead of publication date to support pre-order sales activity.

Birdsong author, Sebastian Faulks, described the tool as “the best widget since the original one in a draught Guinness can”.

• A Guardian newspaper article about the launch of the book widget
• Arstechnica have also written about the release of book widgets
• Example book widget (full size)