Definition:
Google Books is a project developed by the company Google to create a fully digitized library available to users. Thanks to this service, users can use Google’s search engine to browse through millions of books and documents.
This project was born in 2004 (although its launch was not until 2005) with the aim of improving existing digital scanning methods and creating the largest digital library in the world (the goal was to reach at least 15 million books). Google made a strong monetary investment in technology and contact with the main universities and libraries in the world to collaborate in its project.
How Google Books works
Through optical character recognition, Google converts books from physical to digital format, transforms them into PDFs and stores them in its online database. When a user performs a search in the Google search engine, if this is relevant for certain books these will appear in the search results, likewise the user can search directly on the Google Books page where he will only find books. Once the user clicks on a book, it can read it online, share it or download it if it is free, or buy it if on the contrary it is a paid book.
Google Books and Digital Marketing
Google has not wanted to lose the possibility of obtaining benefits from this initiative, converting to Google Books in a space where to advertise online and being very interesting for professionals Digital Marketing since the ads can be segmented to match the content of the books and thus reach a much more relevant audience.
It has also become a very important sales channel for publishers and bookstores that can scan their books to incorporate them into this platform, let users see a small part of them and then link them to their website so they can buy them.