Google Book Search Rank and Payments

Authors and publishers who need a break from checking their sales rank on Amazon have a new thrill in store, checking your sort rank in Google Book Search. Google has been taking their time with the Book Search program, legal challenges have been a major thorn in their side, but it looks like they are rolling out in earnest now. When I was casually searching for something on Google yesterday and I intended to look at the second page of results, I ended up getting book search results. It turned out that the link I assumed would take me to the next page had become a "Try your search again on Google Book Search" link.

I've been a public backer of the Book Search program since it's inception, I must have signed up on the first day. Google quoted an excerpt from a blog post of mine where I expressed the view that I couldn't see any way the program could hurt book sales.

Now that I see the Book Search engine getting prominent placement and the results in a well organized format, the question will be whether or not it really helps sales. I suspect it will, especially on Chris Anderson's Long Tail. The reason I don't imagine it will have any impact on bestseller in its current incarnation is twofold. First, bestsellers are well known to the book buying public and there's no mystery what they contain. I just can't picture a lot of random book searches bring potential customers to the results of some bestseller that hadn't come to mind of its own accord. Second, I don't see any sign yet (like numerical ranks) that Google is sorting books by sell-through (or click-through), rather than by content match. The power of Amazon sales has always been that they are muliplicative. The more books you sell on Amazon, the higher they rank in search results for the subject, creating a positive feedback loop. Google Book Search appears to be ranking their results strictly based on content, and they may be reluctant to rejigger results to display the books that earn them the most revenue. That's the difference between running a store and running a search engine.

I'm also hoping that the recently announced Google Payments service, when it arrives, will get Google into the ebook sales business they announced last year. Sure, they could have launched their ebook sales program and accepted regular credit cards, and maybe they still will, but strategically, it seems like a good way to sign-up new users for Google Payments. The more people sign up for the program, the easier it will be to convince merchants to adopt the program. In terms of one-stop shopping, Google is rapidly approaching the point where they'll be able to provide everything a small publisher needs to get into the business, except books!