Google, Yahoo and the Internet Archive, MSN projects — is
your effort going to be competing with them directly? Or will there be
any sense of collaboration?
You have to think about three different categories of books. There are
in-print books, there are out-of-print books and then there are
out-of-copyright books.
Now, the out-of-copyright books are the only ones that are in the public domain and so anybody can scan those books. We can do that too and you don't even need to charge — I don't need to charge customers for them because they're already in the public domain so they can just be offered for free.
The in-copyright books, whether they're in print or out of print — in both cases we want to continue as we have been with Search Inside the Book. So we'll keep working with the publishers to add to that number. Search Inside the Book only allows customers to view a sample of the book, but with Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade, they'll be able to do continuous reading, look at any page that they want to look at and not be restricted in the same way that they are with Search Inside the Book. The technologies are very similar and so [is] the approach we take of working cooperatively with the publishers.
So, if Yahoo and the Internet Archive are allowing their
database to be searchable, will you incorporate that database? Will
there be any melding? Work with others?
I think we'll have to wait and see on that, but you know, in the public domain, I don't see why not.
And so you're not going to discontinue Search Inside the Book?
That will continue as it is. These are new programs that will go in addition to Search Inside the Book.
Search Inside the Book did seem like it was pioneering in
this effort of scanning and digitisation. Did you feel any heat at the
time when you released that?
When we released Search Inside the Book we had to deal with a lot of
work in terms of explaining the program, making sure that people
understand it. That's why we've had such success with it over the last
few years. We just work with publishers and get their permission.
But couldn't someone figure out a way to search the keyword
terms and then go to the front of where the pages start and use a word
at the front? It might take a long time, but...
Well, also there are limits on how much in Search Inside the Book you
can look at, so when you go in and look, you can go forward two pages
and back two pages and then even if you search again and find, you
know, the third page, there's still a limit for how far forward and
back you can go. That program is not designed to be online access for
the book, it's designed to let people kind of crack open the book and
look at it and help them make a purchase decision the same way as they
would in a physical store.
If I were to go to a physical store I might, you know, open up a book, look at a few pages, read the first page, skim through it, look at the index, make sure the terms that I was interested in are in the book — those are the kind of things that Search Inside the Book is designed for and that's how it's been used. We have a lot of data on how customers are using Search Inside the Book and it's being used in exactly the way that we've designed it for.
So is there a way you can quantify whether allowing them to Search Inside the Book is actually leading to more sales?
Yes there is, and we have released those figures to the publishers.
But not to the public.
We recently launched it in Germany, for example, and what we see is
about an 8 percent [sales] lift when a book goes into Search Inside the
Book.
Can you make any extrapolations as to how much of a demand there will be for Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade?
I don't think so because this is a very different program. Amazon
Search Inside the Book is about sampling, Amazon Pages and Amazon
Upgrade are about giving people complete access for online reading. So
I think we'll have to wait and see.
But no printing and no downloading or copying? Is that correct?
No, I expect the majority of books will have [some] copy [and] print
capabilities, but again, our point of view on this — and we feel very
strongly about this — is that those are the kinds of decisions that the
copyright holder gets to make about their book.
How many publishers and entities are you working with or talking to?
We're not releasing the full number...
