Edelweiss From Above the Treeline

Shelf Awareness is reporting on a new application from Above The Treeline that will integrate publisher's catalog information into a stores POS system as well as offering more expansive functionality:

Above the Treeline is beginning to test Edelweiss, an online, interactive product that offers the information of traditional print catalogues electronically and allows the material to be customized, updated, managed, enriched and more. In addition, orders and bibliographic material can be integrated into retailers' point-of-sale systems. Edelweiss will likely be a "freestanding online module," available at no charge to book buyers, regardless of whether they use Above the Treeline, as well as offered to other users of catalogues such as publicists, bloggers, agents and others.

Edelweiss allows sales reps to mark up their publishers' titles for specific retailers. Reps can either do so through Edelweiss or create their own printable pdf versions of the catalogue.

Book buyers can manage their catalogues in an online library and search the catalogue by category, custom tags, pub dates, etc. Additionally, users can customize what they want to see about titles in a manner similar to a My Yahoo or iGoogle home page, where widgets such as "illustrations," "publicity/marketing info" or "notes from reps" can be placed on the page.