Google Book Search has launched a set of free tools that allow retailers, publishers and “anyone with a web site” to embed books form the Google Book Search index.
In a blog Google Book Search product manager, Alex Diaz, said that “we’re taking a big step towards bringing more books, across more sites, to more people online”.
The new tools will also provide new ways to display full-text search results from Book Search, and integrate with social features such as ratings, reviews, and readers’ book collections.
Companies already signed up to Google Book Search’s new tools include Books-A-Million, Blackwell and the Book Depository, A1Books in India, Librería Norma in Colombia, Van Stockum in the Netherlands, and Livraria Cultura in Brazil.
Google has also posted an open set of APIs, so that web developers can build applications and customize how they use the search functions. “We know that even more sites will also want to work with the Book Search index in ways we can’t even imagine,” Diaz added.
