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Heather Hopkins from Hitwise UK reports an interesting phenomena on Google’s book search. The company may have started to offer PDF versions of out-of-print books, a very encouraging move to be sure. But a significant proportion of users go from directly from book search to book shops. Heather reports: “Last week, 15.93% of downstream visits from Google Book Search UK went to websites in the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds - Books category.”

Sounds like good news for booksellers. “Google Book Search may be facilitating sales of Books.” Well, maybe.

Heather then goes on to give a picture of the people who follow this search path: “The 55+ age group was 69% more likely to be on Google Book Search than average for the UK internet population … The Types that are most highly over-represented on Google Book Search UK are really interesting as they represent young uni students and the elderly.” One thing that links many members of those two groups together is, of course, low incomes.

Google’s book search is, among other things, a low-cost way to gain access to books and to learn more about books you might consider buying. One great feature is links from the book lists to worldcat, which allows you to see which libraries in your area stock the book. Perhaps the 16% downstream from book search to book shops represents the people who are frustrated that they can’t get the works they want as a free PDF or loan it from a local library?

Elsewhere: Students Seek Alternatives as Textbook Prices Mount

and Google’s PDFs not very usable.