With Google Books pages coming up in the top of Web Search, having listings in Google Books should now be key to publishers’ online marketing campaigns. While there is no doubt of the value of Google Books to those looking to increase book sales online, there is some concern about the lack of order in Google Books search results.

The results in Google Books search results come from two sources, the Google Books Partner Program and Google Books Library Project. The Google Books Partner Program allows publishers submit their book lists at no cost. Publishers have a choice of four formats for the submission.

1. Full view where you can view or download the entire book. This would be of no value and actually would devalue the book itself, and I gather this is generally for the Google Books Library Project.
2. Limited preview allows the user to view a limited number of pages of the book.
3. Snippet view allows the user to view a few sentences surrounding the search term.
4. No preview available shows no content from the book.

Personally, I think that limited preview is the way to go. I like to read a few pages of a book when I buy it in a bookstore, and I feel the same way about making my online purchases, and I have no doubt that many people feel the same way.

Google Books has every page of your book scanned

Google promises to protect your content “by the same security as Google.com’s search data”, but here is how it works in a nutshell:

[They] scan the full text of your book because [they] want people to be able to search all its content. But users can only access a limited number of pages to determine whether they’ve found what they’re looking for.

I am sure there will be some complainers that will think: “ooh that’s bad that they want every page - they are being sneaky and have something to gain”. Sure, they have a lot to gain, but it is a win/win situation for everyone involved in my (humble) opinion.

It’s true that the results in Google Books search are a little “unruly, but they have Google has to rank them somehow. Universal Search is of concern to some in the SEO industry, I think it’s all very interesting. I wonder how Google book search ranks the book results. I want to look at this over the next few weeks for fun.