Show Notes: Kindle and Google and Nook, oh my!

“Search drives sales,” said Google’s Gavin Bishop at a much-anticipated Monday afternoon session at the two-day Digital Book World Discoverability and Marketing conference at New York’s Metropolitan Pavilion. Bishop delivered results from a study the search giant did of 250 New York Times bestselling titles from 2010-2012, analyzing 130,000 search queries on said titles across laptops, smart phones and tablets.

What the study found is that there’s a definite “sales funnel” for online search, with 50 percent of searches falling under the heading of “discovery” where searchers are looking for inspiration; 40 percent of searches falling under “consideration” where searchers are narrowing their choices; and 10 percent fall under “intent” with searchers closing in on a purchase.

Bishop noted that it’s not a pure funnel, in that while some searchers go through all three phases, many buy directly from earlier stages.

Good news for publishers is that search volume has risen over the period of study for nearly all genres and formats (with the exception of textbooks). It’s also risen for categories such as “best books” (up 33 percent), brick and mortar bookstores (up 20 percent), ebooks and e-readers (up 69 percent), audio books (up 22 percent) and online bookstores (up 23 percent).

The study found, perhaps not so surprisingly, that there is a direct correlation between search and sales.

Bishop said that a whitepaper based on the study is forthcoming, and that those interested in obtaining it should send an email to thinkdbw@google.com.

•If Google’s search data indicates a rising tide (more interest in books), then Amazon is further poising itself to capitalize. In a talk on Tuesday morning, Jon Fine, Amazon’s director of Author and Publisher Relationships, expanded on this theme, presenting “some of the Kool-Aid I buy into” that Amazon is committed to the mantra of “more books, to more people, in more ways” and that “At the end of the day, it’s not print vs. digital. It’s books vs. everything else. Movies games, browsing the web.”