Digital content services provider Ingram Digital Group, US, has announced an agreement with software vendor Microsoft Corp., US, to offer publishers a transition option from Live Search Books to the Ingram Search and Discover platform. Microsoft recently announced plans to shut down the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects.
Ingram is offering to transition all participating Microsoft Live Search Books publishers at no cost, enabling publishers to continue making their content searchable and available to readers.
For those publishers who choose, Ingram will archive their Live Search Book files following the closing of Live Search Books, giving them time and options to use those files for future discovery, print-on-demand and e-book distribution.
During a partnership last year, the Ingram and Microsoft Live Search teams built a content ingestion and digitisation centre capable of processing hundreds of thousands of books each year into digital forms. These can be utilised for a variety of search and discovery, print-on-demand and e-book formats. Additionally, Ingram is offering publishers the opportunity to make the content available in Lightning Source print-on-demand programmes and Ingram Digital e-book programmes.
The Ingram Search and Discover platform is projected to enable booksellers to transform the online book browsing experience into a richer one. It seeks to offer book buyers the ability to see a book before they purchase and to look inside the book as if they were browsing in their local bookstore. In addition, the Ingram Search and Discover platform allows potential customers to find books that meet their needs by making publisher content crawlable by Microsoft Live Search, Google and other popular search engines.
