
"Amazon has long served as a valuable research tool for books in print, so much so that some university library systems are now emulating it. Recent additions to the Search Inside the Book program such as concordances, interlinked citations, and statistically improbable phrases (where distinctive terms in the book act as machine-generated tags) are especially fun to play with. Although first and foremost a retailer, Amazon feels more and more like a search system every day (and its A9 engine, though seemingly always on the back burner, is also developing some interesting features)."
Over the last two years, I've found at least 20 new writers while surfing through lists compiled by Amazon users. As an example, check out this funny Listmania! list by a fellow fan of Kelly Link. As online publishing grows, search engines will become the main measure of who is reading your book, registering the click-through preferences of millions of readers. Search engines are helping publishers (and writers) measure audience demographics and target new audiences. Can you find you on Google? It's time to start paying attention.







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