This morning, The Millions takes a closer look at the new book widgets released this week by HarperCollins and Random House. He is not a fan.

When I first got the news about HarperCollins' offering, I soon drifted away from their site to friendlier environs because I couldn't get it to work. I tried it again today and finally got the larger browser to launch after much insistent clicking. It has an advantage in that you can, with some squinting, read an entire page without scrolling, but its interface feels clunky. Plus, having to watch "loading" dots between every page tries my patience.

Google Book Search also has its own widget, which The Millions says, "points to a useful service, where readers can discover (and if they want to, buy) books that interest them." Maybe I'm unable to see the big picture, but I haven't yet found much useful about Google Book Search other than finding quotes. And even then I only get exactly what I'm looking for maybe half of the time. Besides being gigantic in both vertical and horizontal form, Google's widget is exceptionally ugly. And certain book covers are unreadable. And I haven't been able to figure out if you can force it to point at specific titles. And it serves up blanks when a suitable match can't be found. And the flashing between each set of search string results makes me go into seizures.

And its code doesn't always play nice with other elements on a web page. If all you see above is "Loading...", Google's widget is being naughty.

In terms of who has the better viewer, I agree that Random House wins "the first round of the 'Widget Wars.'" Although, like HarperCollins' widget, it seems to launch the larger browser when it feels like it, I still think it's cool. I like being able to point to specific books, how the pages flip, and the search function (accessed by clicking on the binoculars). It also convinced me to want one of their books after reading the first chapter of the title I mentioned yesterday.

But, The Millions says, "These widgets...are akin to putting a big billboard on the side of your house and getting nothing in return." This is very true of the ones from HarperCollins and Google Book Search. Random House, however, allows you to customize the "Buy" button to point to your preferred online bookstore. For people like me, who have to monetize to cover the bandwidth bill, I applaud Random House for allowing site publishers to send buyers to a preferred affiliate program. Unfortunately, the customizable "Buy" button only works for the small viewer. If they change it so that I can also embed my affiliate code into the large viewer, I could be persuaded to promote more of their books.

More thoughts on book widgets:

• "And Here Comes Random House!" from Issues in Publishing
• "Feeling Random" from if:book
• "Publisher Releases New Technology to Blogs to Allow Browsing of Books" from INDIEScribe (NB: Insight is Random House's technology. HarperCollins calls theirs Browse Inside.)
• "Fun with Widgets" from Nathan Bransford
• "The Book Widgets" from Deeplinking