The ABC’s of GBS: Part 1

Google Book Search explained as a tool for marketing books through discoverability on the internet.

For a while, Evan Schnittman (his bio is at the bottom of the post) and I have been planning a series of blog posts which would provide a look “Inside Oxford.” So last week, when the Financial Times article about digitizing books came out, I was eager to post his full response (a shorter response appeared in the paper on Saturday). This week we present the first installment of Evan’s series on “The ABC’s of GBS.” With his help, we hope to untangle the intricacies, and express our excitement, about the future of publishing. Be sure to check back next week for Part 2 of this series.

GBS, (Google Book Search) is the publisher-sanctioned effort by Google to “organize the world’s information” by licensing the right to scan (or upload a digital file), host, index, and display search-relevant portions of books. This effort is not to be confused with Google Library (not publisher-sanctioned) or Google Scholar (journals focused) or even the newly named initiative, Google Print (Print ad space sales for magazines).

In its purest form, Google Book Search is a marketing tool for books on the internet. The theory behind GBS is that Google indexes the entire content of a book and applies its powerful search algorithm to the indexed content, which enables internet searches to “discover” relevant book content. The search “result” when clicked, leads directly to an image of the book page in the book where the result first appears. The consumer is allowed to read a few pages of content before jumping to the next result. There are options to do additional searches within the book, but it all ends after about 20% of the content has been viewed. This 20% freeze lasts for a month, where the counter restarts and the customer can begin searching and reading again.

Though it sounds quite simple, it is a very, very complex task to integrate simple full text search into Google’s algorithm as the components that drive internet site ranked results are completely different. Internet sites show up on search engines because of key factors such as site popularity, number of links to the site, metadata, length of time in the index, etc. Book content has a hard time competing in those terms, so the engineers at Google have been tweaking and massaging their systems to help books become appropriately discoverable.

Think about it this way, if a searcher on Google types in the phrase “Washington’s Crossing,” search has to make assumptions about what the average person is looking to find: Are they looking for information on the historic park, an illustrated timelines of the event, directions to the park, the name of the artist who did the painting, the name of the author of the book? This is a simplistic example but one that gets more complicated when you add book content to an internet search.

The good news is that as more books are indexed, and the more use the indexed content gets, the algorithm gets better at making book content show up in searches where the intended or best results lead to book content. Furthermore, the more people discover books on the internet through search engines, the more they will look to the internet as a place to discover books. That is the key benefit to GBS: Book content made discoverable where most of the world looks to for information, the internet.

This will make the internet the most cost effective marketing tool for books.

Oxford University Press is participating in Google Book Search, as well as Microsoft’s Live Search Books (LSB) and Amazon’s Search Inside The Book (SITB) because we strongly believe that discoverability and access leads to customer acquisition and book purchasing. By indexing and placing our book content where it can be most easily discovered, Google has changed how books are marketed. Yes, Amazon has been doing SITB for 3 years, but it is a merchandizing program, not a discovery program. As good as SITB is (and it is very good) it cannot reach out across the internet and bring customers to Amazon.

Where SITB is an enhancement to the book shopping experience – GBS and LSB can introduce the notion that a book may hold the answers. GBS and LSB are a means for internet users to discover book content in the course of general internet usage. This is a landmark development in the course of book marketing as never before have books been afforded the opportunity for so much exposure. In fact, I believe that one can argue that this is the first time in the history of book marketing that the full contents of a book will directly market the book. GBS and LSB are turning upside down the entire notion of book marketing.

However, I don’t want to let expectations of this marketing revolution to get carried away. Just because the contents of a book are made discoverable, doesn’t mean that they will be discovered or when discovered will be appropriate – or of enough immediate value to produce a sale. There are many, many factors in a consumer purchase online – discover is the first test.

Evan Schnittman is OUP’s Vice President of Business Development and Rights for the Academic and USA Divisions. His career in publishing spans nearly 20 years and includes positions as varied as Executive Vice President at The Princeton Review and Professor at New York University’s Center for Publishing. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children. (Full Disclosure: Evan is a member of Google’s Publisher Advisory Board. As the name implies, it is simply an advisory group, and Google can take or leave its suggestions. Additionally, OUP is participating not only in Google Book Search, but also Microsoft’s Live Search Books (LSB) and Amazon’s Search Inside The Book (SITB).)