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144
Steve Weber
Publishers participating in Google Book Search can link to their
titles on their own Web site within links such as:
Be sure to replace the ISBN above (the digits following the equal
sign) with the ISBN for your title. The only problem is, there’s no
guarantee the visitor who just left your site for Google will come back. If
you’re trying to get direct sales from your Web site, this could be an
issue. At the Google Book Search site, your visitor will see Buy links to
a variety of retailers, including Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble,
BookSense, and of course Google Base, the search engine’s product
listing area.
Accidental book discovery
One huge advantage for authors about Google Book Search is it
enables people to discover your book, even if they weren’t necessarily
looking for a book. If a Google.com user searches for words that appear
in your title or text, a link to your book can be displayed above the
regular Web-page results. This can lead to dozens or hundreds more
people stumbling onto your book daily.
Like Amazon’s Search Inside program, Google Book Search gives
free access to your book’s complete table of contents and index. In
response, savvy nonfiction publishers these days are printing tables of
contents with as much detail as possible, making them more attractive
to browsers. For example, instead of a brief table showing only chapter
headings, the table mentions every section and subsection, nearly down
to the paragraph level. The more information you can pack into your
table of contents, the more likely you can hook a reader who’s begun
skimming it online. Content tables should read like a high-end
restaurant menu, artfully mentioning every essential ingredient and
whetting the reader’s appetite.
Google runs small advertisements from its AdWords network on the
Book Search pages, and splits the ad revenue with publishers. When
someone clicks on an ad from a page displaying your book, you get paid,
although publishers agree that revenue from the program has been
minimal.
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