BISG Releases New BookDrop Standard to Help Ease Discovery of Online Book Content
The trade association Book Industry Study Group (BISG) has released version 1.0 of its BookDROP technical specification, a new standard intended to support the search and discovery of digital book content on the Web.
According to BISG, BookDROP defines a set of HTTP transactions between a publisher’s digital-book archive and the Web sites of the publisher’s syndication partners. The overall goal of the standard is to encourage the discovery, search, browse and distribution of digital book content across the Web, while allowing publishers to manage the quality and availability of their content.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) began the work that led to BookDROP, and subsequent development was managed by BISG’s Digital Standards Committee, a cross-industry group comprising representatives from publishing companies, book-sellers, search engines and other organizations.
“The central idea behind BookDROP is a simple one: to standardize a set of HTTP calls that allows a publisher’s channel partners to connect easily and efficiently to a publisher’s digital book content," says BISG Executive Director Michael Healy. "It’s the result of a lot of effort from a lot of different people—not just publishers, but booksellers, systems and service suppliers—and the product of cooperation between the AAP and BISG.”
"The $64,000 question is whether these standards are still relevant in light of Google Book Search, particularly with the Google-AAP case [now] settled," commented Andrew Brenneman, Book Business columnist and managing director of Finitiv, a digital media consultancy. "Has the issue of discovery already been solved?"
The BookDROP technical specification may be downloaded at http://www.BISG.org/committees/digitalstandards.html