Boston Publishers Benefit from Google Partner Program

From an article in the Boston Globe last week about the Google Books program (not the settlement) several interesting quotes from the experiences of Houghton Mifflin and MIT Press:

Langevin said that Galbraith’s “The Great Crash 1929’’ generated “zero’’ views for July and August 2008. In September 2008, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused the US economy to start teetering, book views rose to 628. By October, the views rocketed to 22,897, as Internet users started searching for words and concepts that were well represented in the book, although the number of views did subside later.

Langevin said that sales of Galbraith’s book also spiked during the peak months.

MIT Press’s Manaktala said she noticed that views of the publisher’s books increased dramatically after universal search was implemented. “What surprises me is that pretty much every one of our 2,600 books on Google gets viewed every week,’’ she said.

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“It’s really a great deal,’’ said Manaktala. “We could never afford to create all this exposure ourselves.’’