[Reader-list] Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books

[Rana Dasgupta]

NYT article.  Major web firms compete with each other and with publishers
over the complex issue of putting books online.

R


July 21, 2003
Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/technology/21AMAZ.html?th=&pagewanted=prin
t&position=


Executives at Amazon.com are negotiating with several of the largest book
publishers about an ambitious and expensive plan to assemble a searchable
online archive with the texts of tens of thousands of books of nonfiction,
according to several publishing executives involved.

Amazon plans to limit how much of any given book a user can read, and it is
telling publishers that the plan will help sell more books while better
serving its own online customers.

Together with little-publicized additions to Amazon's Web site, like
listings of restaurants and movie showings, the plan appears to be part of a
strategy to compete with online search services like Google and Yahoo for
consumers' time and attention. Providing a searchable online database of the
contents of books could make Amazon a more authoritative source of
information, drawing additional traffic to its online retail store.

A spokeswoman for Amazon declined to comment and would not confirm any of
details of the plan. The publishing executives said Amazon had asked them to
keep the plan confidential until the start of the service, which was
scheduled for the fall.

Amazon is calling its program Look Inside the Book II, the publishers said.
It would expand on a current program that lets shoppers read a table of
contents, a first chapter or a few selected pages provided by the publishers
of certain books. But Look Inside the Book II would let online browsers
search by terms like "Caravaggio," "sans-culottes," or "Osama bin Laden,"
and then see a list of books mentioning the term along with the sentence
that contains it. Browsers could then choose to see several pages around
that citation.

But to see those pages Amazon would require users to register, and it plans
to limit the amount of any single book a browser can view.

The publishers said they have been guardedly cooperative. Some said they
were willing to let Amazon experiment with works of narrative nonfiction,
but not reference books, cookbooks or poetry where shoppers might be
satisfied with the few pages produced by a search. Others are holding out
for further assurances on preventing piracy and guarantees that they will be
able to pull their books from the service.

But some publishing executives also noted that Amazon, by far the largest
online bookseller, stands to benefit far more than they do. Now, in addition
to books, they said, Amazon can sell music, electronics, clothing and other
goods to users drawn to the site by the chance to search its digital
archive, and the publishers would not receive a cut of that revenue.

How authors will react is another question. Most book contracts allow
publishers to give away excerpts for promotional purposes, but authors may
contend that Amazon's search service more closely resembles some kind of
research system. "This sounds like an anthology right, and that has to be
specifically approved by the author, and if a publisher is going to license
the electronic rights to the whole work there has be to reasonable
compensation for that," said Paul Aiken, the executive director of the
Authors Guild.

Amazon appears to be betting heavily on the idea. At a time when Amazon is
squeezing hard to lower its costs everywhere else, the company is paying to
enter thousands of texts into its searchable database, the publishers said.
Although there are many works already in digital format, others would have
to be scanned at a cost of more than $200 a book, executives in the industry
said. It is unclear how many books Amazon is paying to scan.

Amazon's searchable archive also appears to be part of the company's
response to the four-year-old Google, which is changing the way people use
the Internet, gather information, advertise and shop. Microsoft is
developing its own alternative search engine as part of its online service
and just last week Yahoo agreed to acquire Overture, Google's principal
rival in the search business, for $1.6 billion.

The challenge for Web sites like Amazon is that Google's search service is
increasingly cutting in front of them as the first place consumers go
online, diverting shoppers who might have gone straight to Amazon, the most
popular online retailer. Google's Web site accounted for about 32 percent of
the four billion Internet searches conducted in May, compared to about 25
percent from Yahoo, 19 percent through American Online and 15 percent with
Microsoft's MSN service, according to the research company ComScore
Networks.

"Everybody is afraid of Google," said Jordan Rohan, an analyst at SoundView
Technology Group.

Search-result pages are also experiencing the fastest growth in online
advertising. Advertisers can pay to place short text links next to search
results like "New York wedding" or "Hawaiian vacation," and through Overture
they can pay to appear among the results themselves.

Amazon recently reached an agreement with Google to use its search-based
advertising system for searches made on Amazon. (Google sells the
advertising and splits the fees with Amazon.)

Likewise, Google also appears to be taking aim at online retailers like
Amazon by testing a spinoff called Froogle.com, which makes it easy to
browse and comparison shop at scores of online stores at once. Many
consumers already begin searching for products or services at Google, and
Froogle looks like an attempt to capitalize on Google's technology and
reputation to become a shopping destination to rival Amazon, Yahoo or eBay.
If shoppers start at Froogle, "What value does Amazon add?" Mr. Rohan asked.

But Google searches only Web sites, not the contents of books, and Amazon's
proposed archive might offer a more authoritative alternative source of
information. And Google's list of most popular searches on the site suggests
that Amazon's planned combination of a digital library with a retail store
and film and restaurant listings might be a good place to look for answers
to many of the questions.

Earlier this month, a list of "top gaining queries" on Google included
"Pirates of the Caribbean," "Angelina Jolie," "Bastille Day" and
"Stonehenge." Amazon already offers local movie times and customer reviews
for "Pirates" and lists the opening day for Angelina Jolie's coming film, a
sequel to "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." It sells DVD's, video games and other
products related to both films. For after the show, Amazon offers searchable
database of restaurant names by location with menus and some customer
reviews in New York, San Francisco, Boston and other cities.

But with the addition of its planned archive, Amazon could also offer
detailed information about Bastille Day and Stonehenge, as well as related
books for sale.

A spokesman for Google, David Krane, said the company had a strong
relationship with Amazon, which is an important advertiser on Google's
search results as well as a showcase for Google's search-related
advertisements. And he noted that the two companies remain in different and
complementary businesses, one primarily a retailer and the other a research
tool.

Amazon is hardly the first to imagine building a searchable archive of the
contents of thousands of books. The start-ups NetLibrary, Questia and Ebrary
have all pursued similar goals.

NetLibrary, which initially set out to help libraries provide online access
to their patrons, filed for bankruptcy protection and was taken over by a
consortium of libraries. Questia, which paid to digitize about 45,000 works
of nonfiction, charges fees to use its database, and is directed mostly
toward students. It advertises on Overture and Google, where plugs for its
service turn up next to searches for student paper topics like
"postmodernism," for example.

Ebrary, which is partly owned by the Random House division of Bertelsmann,
the publisher Pearson, and textbook giant McGraw-Hill, started with a plan
similar to Amazon's, an online library that also sold books. Ebrary now
offers the contents of about 30,000 documents, including a combination of
books, sheet music and other publications, but it has shifted away from its
original business. "Generating revenue in that fashion would have taken a
much longer period of time," Christopher Warnock, its chief executive, said.
Now, Ebrary mainly helps libraries make books available to patrons over the
Internet.

Thomas D. Turvey Jr., a vice president of business development for Ebrary,
said Amazon's plan was risky because of the potential copyright issues, the
threat of online piracy and the cost of scanning so many books into digital
form.

But Mr. Warnock said he spoke with Amazon about collaborating. "It would
have been great if we could have figured out a way that we could have worked
together on it," he said. Mr. Warnock said that often one Internet company
comes up with a good idea and then another, with a lot of traffic, puts it
to use. "It seems like the way the world works," he said.