Simon & Schuster and Hotels.com Team Up to Help Bored Travelers

Posted on August 20, 2015

Simon & Schuster has teamed up with Hotels.com to get more ebooks in the hands of travelers. The new program starts today. For any customer of Hotels.com that books a two night stay in certain cities will be able to download one of seven free ebooks from Simon & Schuster authors.

The program is a launching with some great titles, including The White Queen by Philippa Gregory, Mr.Mercedes by Stephen King, Crazy Love You by Lisa Unger, The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke, and I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes, You by Caroline Kepnes and The Ascendant by Drew Chapman. The program will be ongoing and new titles will be put in rotation over time.

Kindle users shouldn't get too excited yet, though. Simon & Schuster is making the ebooks available through Glose, an e-reading app that allows you to share your thoughts about books with everyone you've ever met. It's like of the Kindle app, but with more cowbell. Well, more social media. So, if you like to share quotes and gifs about books with your friends and make notes in the margins electronically -- and you're not satisfied with the Kindle or iBooks apps -- this is your thing. If you are a curmudgeon who likes to read alone in peace and would never think of sharing a video about reading a book or your text annotations and you refuse to try anything new, it's not.

Liz Perl, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer of Simon & Schuster is pretty excited about the deal, which is a great way to get more Simon & Schuster titles into the hands of travelers. After all, it's easy to download one more app, whether you're using an iPhone or an Android device. She said, "Business and pleasure travelers spend a great deal of time reading on the road and are an ideal audience with whom to share great new books. We are excited to join together with Hotels.com to help their vast customer base discover their next great read."