A new study indicates that people who search Google Books end up buying books. At Amazon.

“Google’s controversial Book Search is driving traffic to booksellers, new figures show. According to Web monitoring firm Hitwise, the top destination for surfers visiting Google’s UK Book Search was Amazon UK, accounting for 8.3 percent of visits. Book sites accounted for 15.93 percent of all sites visited from the Google Book Search page last week. WH Smith was the second most popular destination with 2.08 percent of visits, followed by Amazon.com with 1.38 percent“

Once book publishers start to understand that the publishing world does not revolve around copyright control, they may start to realise what significant opportunities search, and the internet, can provide in terms of boosting their bottom line.