Where will readers buy their ebooks? Eco-Libris is following Google's search results

So where will readers look to buy their ebooks? Following the launch of Google eBookstore, its relationships with independent bookstores and Amazon's reply, the answer to this question looks unclear than ever. Or is it not?

We decided to check it out and do a little experiment. We believe that many readers will look for ebooks using a search engine and will buy from one of the first results in their search.

So we randomly chose 10 books of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2010, opened Google webpage, typed each title with the word ebook and wrote down the first two results we got. We will redo it every Thursday for 10 weeks and see if there are going to be any changes in the search results.

Our assumptions were that Amazon will get the most results now, but within 10 weeks we'll see Google winning the first or the second place on at least 20% of the cases. We do expect to see some presence of the publishers' websites and none of Independent bookstores' websites.

So let's begin. Here are the results for week 1 (If you click on the titles, you will be forwarded to the first place on the title's search):

1. Girl by the Road at Night by David Rabe
1st place: Simon & Schuster (publisher)
2nd place: Simon & Schuster

2. The Long Song by Andrea Levy
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Amazon.com

3. The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Amazon.com

4. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Random House (publisher)

5. Big Girls Don't Cry by Rebecca Traister
1st place: Simon & Schuster (publisher)
2nd place: Simon & Schuster

6. The Price of Altruism by Oren Harman
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Amazon.com

7. INSECTOPEDIA by Hugh Raffles
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Random House

8. Country Driving by Peter Hessler
1st place: Barnes & Noble
2nd place: goodreads

9. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
1st place: Random House (publisher)
2nd place: Barnes & Noble

10. Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens
1st place: Amazon.com
2nd place: Barnes & Noble

As you can see Amazon is the leading website right now in these searches, winning the 1st place 6 times (60%) and the 2nd place 3 times (30%). Publishers showed relatively surprising strength, winning the first place 3 times (30%) and the 2nd place 4 times (40%). Barnes & Noble
got one time to the first place (10%) and two times to the second place (20%).

So far no big surprises, but let's see how things will move forward in the next couple of weeks. We'll wait for Google to show us what it can do - after all, its Google's search engine..See you next Thursday!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!