What is Google Book Search?
Google Book Search allows readers to search the full text of books to find ones that interest them and learn where to buy or borrow them.
How does Google Book Search work?
Book Search works just like web search: Try a search on Google Book Search or on Google.com. When Google finds a book whose content contains a match for your search terms, they'll link to it in your search results. Clicking on a book result, you'll be able to see everything from a few short excerpts to the entire book, depending on a few different factors.
What can be viewed?
Each book includes an 'About this book' page with basic bibliographic data like title, author, publication date, length and subject. For some books you may also see additional information like key terms and phrases, references to the book from scholarly publications or other books, chapter titles and a list of related books. For every book, you'll see links directing you to bookstores where you can buy the book and libraries where you can borrow it.
Full view:
If Google has determined that a book is out of copyright, or the publisher or rights-holder has given Google permission, you'll be able to page through the entire book from start to finish, as many times as you like. If the book is in the public domain, you'll also be able download, save and print a PDF version to read at your own pace.
Limited preview:
If a publisher or author has joined Google's Partner Program, you'll be able to see a few full pages from the book as a preview. You can conduct multiple searches within the book, or browse through the available pages (there's a limit to the amount of the book that can be viewed online).
Snippet view:
Clicking on the book result, you'll be taken to the 'About this book' page. If you choose to search within the book, for each search term Google will display up to three snippets of text from the book, showing your search term in context. You can enter additional searches to help you decide whether you've found the right book. As always in Book Search, you'll see links to places where you can buy or borrow the book.
No preview available:
For books where Google is unable to show you snippets, you'll see an 'About this book' page displaying bibliographic information about the book, plus links to help you find it in a bookstore or library.
Conclusion:
We highly recommend submitting your book to Google Book Search, and the service is included in the Professional Package, but authors might decide that they do not wish to have parts of the content of their book publicly available. For this reason authors have to opt-in the program.