SBL is pleased to announce that it has joined the Google Books Partner Program, an online book marketing program designed to help publishers and authors promote their books by making available a limited number of sample pages. Using Google Book Search (formerly Google Print), SBL members will now be able to find and search the content of more than twenty titles from SBL's current list of books. This has important potential benefits for SBL, since getting people to browse our books improves sales through all channels and because Google Book Search will make SBL titles easily available to people around the world who might not otherwise encounter them.

Recently, SBL committed to bringing back out-of-print titles using print-on-demand technology, which makes small runs of books with a limited market affordable. But marketing such titles, as well as a backlist as substantial as SBL's, is difficult. Google Book Search is changing all that by helping potential buyers find all SBL titles relevant to their search.

How It Works
Google scans the full text of SBL's titles so that Google users can see books that match the topics they are searching. When users click on a book search result, they are taken to a Google-hosted web page displaying a scanned image of the relevant page from the book. Each page also contains multiple "Buy this Book" links, which enable users to purchase the book from a variety of online retailers, including SBL. It is most profitable to sell our books through our own website, so when we look at a web page on one of our books in Google Book Search, our logo is linked to our site's homepage and the first "buy the book" link goes to that book's buy page on our site.

You, as an SBL member, can just do a search on Google Book Search (http://books.google.com) or on Google.com. Google then links to all books whose content contains a match for your search terms. Click a book title and you'll see the Snippet View which, like a card catalog, shows information about the book plus a few snippets (a few sentences of your search term in context). You may also view sample pages of any SBL books that come up in your search. In all cases, you will also see 'Buy this Book' links that lead directly to online bookstores where you can buy the book.

What It Means for You
Google Book Search gives SBL members an easy way to find our titles, but more importantly, with Google Book Search, you will be able to access information inside our books! SBL members will be able to purchase the book by clicking on one of the links to online booksellers to go to directly to a page where you can buy the book; find more results for your original search terms in other parts of the book, or try a new search within the book; find online reviews and websites featuring related information by clicking on "About this Book"; and learn about the SBL by clicking through to our website.

We plan to have most of our backlist available through Google Book Search in the coming months.

SBL and Amazon
SBL has also joined Amazon's Advantage Program, which allows us to customize the information about our titles on Amazon. Now when you search for a current SBL title on Amazon, you will see a picture of the book's cover, with information about the author, and reviews. And the title is available to ship within 24 hours. Unlike Google, Amazon is an on-line retailer, and retains a portion of the sale of each title.

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Citation: , " SBL Joins the Google Books Partner Program," SBL Forum , n.p. [cited Feb 2006]. Online:http://sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=495