Marketing through Google Books:
Strategy, How-to Tips & What to Avoid

Looking to repurpose your paywalled content and drive traffic to your site? White papers and PDF downloads can easily be uploaded to Google Books

Looking to repurpose your paywalled content and drive traffic to your site? White papers and PDF downloads can easily be uploaded to Google Books and then indexed on Google Search, which will also increase your SEO rankings. But you may want to opt to sell your PDFs through your own site than through the Google Books Storefront. Read on to find out how your subscription or paywall site can use the Google Books platform to your advantage.

Strategic Overview

There are three strategic reasons publishers may want to use Google Books:

Increase SEO Rankings and Traffic. By uploading your PDF as a Google Books Partner, Google will also cross-index a preview of your content on Google Search. (Note: A “book” can be as short as a white paper, so you could repurpose your membership content to create dozens of them.)

Marketing tactic: To increase your Google Search results, you may want to add as many PDF books as possible.

Increase Ecommerce Revenues through Your Own Site. As a Google Books Partner, Google will allow you to link your Google Books Preview to the ecommerce pages on your own page. In this case, Google Books is another marketing platform, allowing you move more titles and increase ecommerce revenues for your business.

Marketing tactic: Low-ball pricing can help you gain new prospects to upsell later. And while Google discourages pop-ups, you can add an email opt-in or overlay to the landing page to turn visitors into prospects.

Increase Ecommerce via Google Play. As a Google Books Seller, you can sell your book through the Google Play, which now incorporates the features of Google’s previous Storefront. But Google will take a cut of your profits and reserves the right to change your list price at their discretion, so this is only a good option for publishers whose sites have absolutely no ecommerce capabilities. We explain the problems of this option in detail below.

How to Get Into Google Books

No matter which strategic aim you’re trying to achieve, you will first need to register your ISBN and register as a Google Books Partner. Here’s what you need to know to complete those steps:

ISBN: You must have an ISBN number for your eBook. ISBN prices range from $1/each to $250/each, depending on how many you buy at once. We suggest buying in bulk since they never expire and can be used for future publications. You will then need to register your book and corresponding ISBN through the Bowker database.
Note:You will need to upload your PDF twice — once through the Bower database and once as a Google Books Partner.
Format: Google Books uses PDF-like formatting. That means you can either upload a PDF or mail in a printed book that Google will scan. There is no option to create the flowing text characterized by Kindle eBooks. But this also makes formatting and uploading easy.
Cover Image: You must have a JPEG cover image for your PDF. Make sure it’s designed to be read as a small thumbnail and hi-res enough to be clear when printed out on 8.5 x 11-inch paper (the file should be under 5MB).
Email: Google requires all Google Book Partners and Google Book Sellers have a gmail address in order to register and will communicate with you primarily through this email address. We recommend creating a unique account for this purpose (i.e., don’t use a personal account).
Descriptive Information: The description of your book is pulled from the Bowker database. When you upload this information, make sure you are prepared to enter all the form fields (see image 1) with keyword-rich data, especially for the title and first paragraph of the book.
Lack of Control: While your success will depend on opting to make your PDF searchable through Google, you can’t control which pages are pulled as previews. If people tend to buy your book for one particular item of information — such as a data chart on one page — your title may not be a good candidate for Google Books because you may be giving it away in the preview.
Time: Although Google claims it may take 2-3 weeks for a book to go live, we found it only took about 48 hours.
URL Links: When registering your PDF on Bowker and Google Books, you may want to create a vanity URL for your Ecommerce landing pages.

Being a Google Seller — What You Need to Know

Once you are an established Partner on Google Books, you can set yourself up to sell directly through Google Play. However, you may not want to for the following reasons:

Google reserves the right to adjust the price of your eBook. They state that a normal discount is 20% off the original price (i.e., they sell it for 80% of the original price), but their terms of services states that “Google and its Authorized Resellers may discount the List Price and the Bundled Price at their sole discretion.” Google dropped the price of our sister site’s Google Books to 54% of the original price
Google’s cut of the sale is a hefty 48% of your original list price (not the lower Google price.)
Google has very poor customer service. Their communication is solely through email and, ironically, their emails went to the spam filter in the gmail account our sister site set up. Even more frustrating is the fact that it’s impossible to get anyone on the phone to resolve pricing disputes or other technical glitches, even though Google is seeking to make money off your content.
Google will retain all customer information. You will not get names, emails or any other information.

If you do decide to sell through Google Play, you will need to:

Enter a bank account and routing numbers so that Google Books can electronically transfer your profits
Provide company tax information for ad revenue and sales
Provide pricing and territory information (see the definition of a business nexus in our Sales Tax Primer).

Google will initiate payment to your account after you make US$1.00, CA$1.00, £1.00, or AU$1.00. Google states that “in many cases” it will “initiate a payment once each month within two business days after the end of the previous calendar month, if your bank account has been verified and we owe you at least the minimum amount.” It may also take your bank up to three additional business days to register the payment in your account.

But Google also reserves the right through an addendum to take up to 60 days to transfer your money. The addendum also states that “Google will not be obligated to transfer funds to you if your earned balance at the time of disbursement or transfer is less than one hundred dollars ($100.00).” You can terminate your account to receive disbursement of any funds over $1.00, but then you’re basically agreeing to end your relationship with Google Books.

The Takeaway

Google Books has its advantages and disadvantages to online publishers. We recommend registering as a Google Books Partner and uploading any white papers and PDF downloads you have behind your paywall in order to take advantage of the SEO rankings and traffic. Then link to sell your PDFs through your own site’s ecommerce pages.

Also, be a competitive shopper. By formatting your content for other eBook platforms — like Kindle, iPad and Nook — Google, Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble will be forced to engage in pricing practices that are more palatable to publishers, and you’re likely to get the best bang for your buck.

The “pedigree” information required to assign an ISBN to a given book: