Google Print Goes Live
By Staff, PW NewsLine -- Publishers Weekly, 10/6/2004
Approximately one year after it began testing a program to put book content into its databases, Google's Google Print initiative went live this morning. Google is touting the program as a way for publishers to get free exposure for the books.Under the program, news of which has been leaking out in bits and pieces since NewsLine broke the story in October, Google scans a book's content into its information archive and the material becomes part of Google's search services. When a user does a Google search, books that contain their search term, such as digital photography, will show up in the search results. The search term will appear in a brief excerpt from the book along with the book's title, author and page number. Users can also do more searching of the book's content, but they can only browse two pages backward and forward from any page where their search term appeared, says Google product director Susan Wojcicki. "Lots of limits are in place," says Wojcicki, adding that Google has taken other security measures, such as disabling the copy and paste function, to ensure that a book's content isn't copied illegally. Wojcicki says the inclusion of books on Google's search service "is the logical next step" in adding more offline material to its database.
Other features of the "excerpt page" include links to Amazon.com, BN.com and Booksense that will allow users to buy the book. Publishers will also be given two links to their own Web sites which can be used to promote or sell the book. The page will also feature ads and publishers will receive a payment whenever the ad is clicked.
Google executives declined to specify how many titles have been already scanned, but the number is believed to easily top 100,000. The published roster of publisher participants includes Penguin, Hyperion, Scholastic, Houghton Mifflin and a number of university presses. Wojcicki says the list includes only publishers that gave Google permission to use their names and that the company is working with most major houses. Google is looking for submissions from publishers of all sizes, as long as the books have ISBNs and are written in English. Smaller publishers can signup online. Wojcicki says the launch of Google Print "is only the beginning" of Google's involvement with publishers. She says the company will be meeting with industry members and attending all relevant shows to promote the program. The first live event is a Thursday press conference at Frankfurt.
Hyperion president Bob Miller says the publisher has sent Google the same titles Hyperion sent to Amazon for its Search Inside the Book program, a list that excludes cookbooks and some reference works. He says his greatest concern is that Hyperion's authors' copyrights are protected from infringement and piracy. But the upside of the program--the potential for hundreds of thousands of people to browse a book--is too tempting to ignore. "It's difficult to get people to browse online, so any service that offers a browsing feature needs to be considered," Miller says. He says Hyperion will "see how the marketplace develops," before adding any more titles to the program.
More info on Google Print is available here.
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