Re: Re: Amazon.com's "Search Inside the Book"

Case in point. I have been using Amazon.com's Search Inside function for data mining purposes, specifically, looking for citations to particular authors I am interested in inviting to speak on a panel and then using these citation sites to find the names of other possible speakers on the same topic. While this service has proved invaluable in this quest, I found everything I was looking for through my searches and felt no particular desire or need to buy these books.

Much depends on how Search Inside the Book is used and whether books are routinely found that the searcher feels are essential to add this his or her personal library.

As a tool to promote sales, the proposed Google model, where only the abstract of a work containing the search string is returned to the searcher, along with directions on how to order it, seems like a much better scheme, although it would make the system useless for my purposes. Knowing only that the work contained a reference to your topic of interest might lead to sales, just to see what all it contains on the subject, but it might also simply lead to an increase in ILL requests, at least for those searchers who understand how libraries operate.

Lloyd

At 04:36 PM 11/3/2003 -0500, Karen Coyle wrote:
>On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 11:55, Keith Tabor wrote:
>
> >
> > The works aren't really available in a way that will
> > diminish sales. The works are searchable and more
> > likely to be seen by people looking for advice on a
> > topic. The works are more likely to be bought.
>
>This is one theory, but as you mention later in your note, if it doesn't
>turn out to be the case, then Amazon will probably discontinue the
>practice.
>
>There isn't proof at the moment that making books available online will
>increase sales. The National Academy Press put some of its works up
>online beginning in 1996 and claimed that sales of those works had gone
>up, measurably. (They did more than put the books up online, however,
>they created an entire online presence for their Press. See the article
>at: http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-04/pope.html) At least one other
>academic publisher, University of California Press, has also made its
>works available online, but last I heard they have not seen an increase
>in sales. Both of these are academic presses, whose works are
>notoriously hard to find in bookstores and receive very little
>promotion, so the increased visibility of these books online could make
>a difference. Most of us are reluctant to buy a book by an unknown
>author that we can't at least leaf through and get some idea of its
>content before putting down our money. Since these books aren't usually
>carried by bookstores, online access gives most readers their first
>chance to browse these books before buying.
>
>Whether or not viewing a few pages online leads to a sale depends on a
>number of factors, including the nature of the text itself. As I recall
>from one posting, publishers of reference books have refused to
>participate in the Amazon feature. For those works, a small number of
>pages may well satisfy the information need of the person doing the
>search, and will substitute for a sale. In the case of some non-fiction
>works, a single chapter may have value in itself. (There are some
>e-textbooks in which individual chapters are being sold separately.)
>
>So the factors are complex. They depend on the type of publishing, the
>nature of the materials, how the materials are presented, and what the
>audience wants. We should view what Amazon is doing as an experiment and
>watch for outcomes before we draw conclusions about how this is for
>authors.
>--
>-------------------------------------
>Karen Coyle
>Digital Library Specialist
>http://www.kcoyle.net
>Ph: 510-540-7596 Fax: 510-848-3913
>--------------------------------------
>
>
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Received on Tue Nov 04 2003 - 22:26:04 GMT