DANIEL FRIDD JOINS EDELWEISS+ UK

Above the Treeline, the company that provides the Edelweiss+ platform, has announced that former Bertline support team member and bookshop owner Daniel (Dan) Fridd is joining the Edelweiss+ UK team. Dan will work with Ruth Bradstreet, Managing Director, Europe, to support booksellers and publishers.

Edelweiss+ is widely used to host digital catalogues and digital review copies from all kinds of publishers - particularly as a way for publishers to generate flexible and bespoke online sales presentations and advance information sheets to share with customers. Book professionals of all types go to Edelweiss+ to discover pre-publication titles, download proofs, and create orders.

Dan is uniquely qualified to support the growth of Edelweiss+ in the UK because he brings a special blend of a love of books and an ambition to help end the fear of technology by breaking barriers between bookselling and tech. His love of the Arts is reflected in his own bookshop, Bookbugs and Dragon Tales, which doubles as an arts and community space. In his spare time, Dan performs in local theatre, the highlight of which was a role in A Midsummer Nights Dream with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He is well-known in the arts and book community as an advocate for the book industry. He spent the last four years as at Bertram Books, helping booksellers get the very best use from their Bertline ePOS systems.

“I’m excited about continuing to work with booksellers, especially during this challenging time when support is needed most. I have been fortunate enough to work with Above the Treeline for many years, including their first collaboration with UK bookselling software. Having spent three days with the Above the Treeline team in the states, I was incredibly impressed with their working environment and cutting-edge approach to development. But, more than anything, I was impressed by their people, who I have gotten to know well over the past several years. They are always looking for the best way to help booksellers, and this is close to my heart. They offer practical, usable tools that facilitate your own working practices as a bookseller, and I’m passionate about that,” said Fridd.

Edelweiss+ accounts are free to booksellers. In the UK and Ireland, the add-on modules, Edelweiss+Analytics and Edelweiss360, are also currently free to support independent bookshops in the area. Edelweiss+Analytics gives independent bookshops a window into how titles are performing at other indies and a big picture view of their own stock and trends by section, publisher, etc. Edelweiss360 builds on those insights to help create data-driven targeted and branded email campaigns for their customers, linking back to an ecommerce method of the booksellers’ choice to streamline online orders.

“I have been an avid enthusiast of the Edelweiss+ online tool and quickly built in training for the system into my own Bertline training programs. When my wife and I created Bookbugs and Dragon Tales bookshop, we used a combination of other bookshops’ stock, our own wish lists, and the Edelweiss data to build our opening stock. It has proven a very successful method, and I have assisted over 50 new bookshops build their stock using the same method in the last two years. I look forward to helping UK booksellers discover and use all of the tools within the platform that will help declutter a booksellers working day - the digital publisher catalogues, frontlist ordering capability, event management, and Edelweiss360 email marketing. More than anything, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to continue visiting bookshops as part of my job. I consider myself very lucky to be able to say that.”

“I could not be more thrilled to have Dan on board. He is well known and, even more, well-liked by the independent bookselling community here in the UK and Ireland. He’s been a valued partner at Bertrams and an advocate of Edelweiss+Analytics for booksellers since a successful integration of the two platforms a few years ago,” said Ruth Bradstreet, MD Europe. “I’m confident that his technical know-how and deep understanding of bookselling will help people get more comfortable using some of the free tools that Edelweiss offers. The entire team at Above the Treeline is looking forward to working with him to help booksellers rise to the challenges they are currently facing. I can’t imagine anyone more prepared to hit the ground running with this effort than Dan.”