Of Microsoft Live Search Books and Ingram’s digital tugboats

By David Rothman

Microsoft’s Live Search Books tried hard to make a splash, with regular ads in Publishers Weekly and elsewhere—a major marketing effort. And it recruited Theresa Horner, a key e-book exec from HarperCollins. Now Live’s going dead. So what’s a publisher to do? Regardless of how certain Luddites may feel, many and perhaps most publishing houses want their titles to be discovered online in a book-oriented area (on their terms). And many prefer not to depend on Google alone for tasks such as scanning and digitization.

The tugboat angle

A possibility worth investigating is from Ingram Digital, a branch of the Ingram conglomerate known for its huge p-book distributor. Would you believe that Ingram Industries is actually in the barge business as well? Makes sense, come to think of it. Books and coal andwhatnot—just different collections of atoms (that’s an Ingram-owned tugboat to the right).

Back to the book kind of atoms—or, rather, electrons or the change from one to the other. Ingram is "offering to transition all participating Microsoft Live Search Books publishers into its Ingram Search and Discover platform at no cost, enabling publishers to continue making their content searchable and available to readers." I’d welcome people’s thoughts on this and other discovery possibilities; I understand that 1,100 publishers are now using Ingram Digital’s services, which, on second thought, might aspire to be a digital Mississippi rather than a mere barge shop.

The BookStore and annotations factors

Among other things, it will be interesting to see if Ingram Digital and Macmillan’s BookStore service end up butting heads eventually in a big way, and also if either tries to develop interbook links, and whether the two could work together in this and other and areas and maybe even cooperate with librarians in link development. OCLC involvement as well? Or contract work someday for a TeleRead-style digital library system?

I’ll also be curious to about possible tie-ins between the Ingram’s online side and the company’s VitalSource software, which, by the way, includes capabilities for shared annotations; might VitalSource and the Search and Discover service hook into each other in some way that promoted books as communities? VitalSource, a desktop app, could capture annotations that people made on online, in the education area and others. People might also use it to write annotations offline.

Meanwhile, ahead, I’ll reproduce the Ingram news release.

 

Ingram Digital Reaches Agreement with Microsoft

to Offer Publishers a Transition Option
from Live Search Books

to Ingram Search and Discover Platform

Ingram Digital, an Ingram Content company focused on solutions for digital content management, distribution and promotion, today announced that it is offering to transition all participating Microsoft Live Search Books publishers into its Ingram Search and Discover platform at no cost, enabling publishers to continue making their content searchable and available to readers.

For those publishers who choose, Ingram will archive their Live Search Book files following the closing of Live Search Books, giving them time and options to use those files for future discovery, print-on-demand and e-book distribution.

During the partnership of the last year, the Ingram and Microsoft Live Search teams have built a state of the art content ingestion and digitization center capable of processing hundreds of thousands of books each year into digital forms that can be utilized for a variety of search and discovery, print-on-demand and e-book formats.

Through this agreement, Ingram is offering Live Search Books publishers the opportunity to continue their digitization plans and make their content available in the Ingram Search and Discover platform.

Additionally, Ingram is offering publishers the opportunity to make the content available in Lightning Source print-on-demand programs and Ingram Digital e-book programs.

The Ingram Search and Discover platform enables booksellers to transform the online book browsing experience into a richer one, offering book buyers the ability to see a book before they purchase and to look inside the book as if they were browsing in their local bookstore.  In addition, the Ingram Search and Discover platform allows potential customers to find books that meet their needs by making publisher content crawlable by Microsoft Live Search, Google and other leading search engines.

“Ingram understands the changing nature of business priorities and the decision by the Live Search Books management team to focus its resources on other opportunities,” said James Gray, President and CEO of Ingram Digital. “Microsoft has done an excellent job evangelizing to publishers about the benefits of digital discovery of book content, and Ingram is in strong agreement with the benefits to readers, publishers and booksellers.  We look forward to working with publishers to help them manage this transition and continue to develop their digital strategy.”

About Ingram Digital

Ingram Digital is an Ingram Content company. Together with Ingram Book Group and Lightning Source Inc., the Ingram Content companies provide a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry. Ingram Digital provides publishers and other content owners with a comprehensive offering of digital content accession, storage, management and distribution services. Ingram Digital currently has several solution platforms – including MyiLibrary and VitalSource Technologies – which serve the institutional and educational markets respectively. In addition, Ingram Digital also serves the retailer market with full e-book and audio downloads as well as various search-and-discovery and marketing tools such as widgets. For more information, visit www.ingramdigital.com.