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Ediciones Rialp was formed over half a century ago to bring high-quality reading material in the humanities. Philosophy, essays, spirituality, history and poetry are just some of the components of its rich and varied offering.

Challenge

Rialp believes that new technologies are not going to replace paper altogether, and for that reason the firm continues publishing only in printed form.

Nevertheless, anything to do with administration, marketing and supplier and customer relations couldn't even be imagined today without computers. Marketing in particular presents very special challenges, as RIALP is always looking to find new readers, who can not always be reached or targeted via traditional marketing methods.

Solution

The company began to participate in the Google Books Programme as they thought it would be an opportunity for people anywhere in the world - even those who don't know RIALP's publications, the author's name, the book's title or technical data - to be able to discover books discussing the search words they used.

The company also liked the idea of not having to invest heavily in equipment and software or meet monthly maintenance, hosting and like costs. An added benefit was that the company could use its Google Analytics account to track and monitor traffic coming to its site from Google Books.

"After over six months in the Book Search program, RIALP has seen growth in sales of both its front and backlist titles - from classics like Don Quixote, to specialist titles on the music of silent films. 100% of the publisher's books have been viewed on Google Books, and users have clicked on the "Buy this book" link for more than 90% of titles.

RIALP attributes these excellent results to the fact that the Partner Program converts book searchers into book consumers - helping them discover books that they may not even have been looking for. For example, the recent success of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons may have spurred searches for books on the Illuminati or Opus Dei: one of RIALP's titles, "Los Illuminati y el Priorato de Sión," has had 2,350 views, of which 18.3% led to a click on their "buy the book" links.

Likewise, popular keywords can also lead people to the publisher's books. Of the 73,432 views of Nuevos poemas de amor, many of them were likely drawn to the book while searching the word "amor." RIALP has seen similar results for books whose subject matter is of broad interest. For example, someone searching for the history of a particular European country may have discovered its book, Los Orígenes de Europa. Indeed, hundreds of words such as the names of places or geographic landmarks could have led to the display of this book. So far, the book has had 17,803 page views, with 9.3% of viewers clicking "Buy this book."

"This is a fantastic - and free - marketing tool, and ensures that the company's books get the greatest amount of visibility possible," said Mirón.

About Google Books

Google Books enables publishers to promote their books on Google. Google scans the full text of participating publishers' titles so that Google users can see books that match the topics they are searching on. When users click on a book search result, they're taken to a Google-hosted web page displaying a scanned image of the relevant page from the book. Each page also contains multiple "Buy this Book" links, which enable users to purchase the book from online retailers. Users may also see contextually targeted Google AdWords ads on these pages. Publishers will receive a share of the revenue generated from ads appearing on their content.