Googleprint

Google is beta testing a new book service. When you look for a "book" in the regular search window, books in the googleprint system are presented at the top of the page with an icon of colorful book spines. Click a listing to move into the special area where you're offered glimpses (like Amazon's "Inside the Book") of covers, copyrights, a few pages, tables of contents, and links to pages for the books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Sense, and in Froogle. Booksense.com looked useful because it requires you to search by zip code. Unfortunately it returned the name of a bookstore which specializes in mysteries when I was looking at books on herbs. Googleprint wants publishers to send books and has a comprehensive program and procedures established to receive and scan them at no charge. The whole book is scanned so it's all searchable. Also, Google puts contextual advertising on the results pages resulting in income to the publisher. It is unclear if Google accepts print/publish-on-deman (POD) productions. It does ask for the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) of any book sent.