a day late
The New York Times weighs in on Amazon’s Search Inside the Book, and summarizes different arguments that have been put forth about it. It might hurt poetry books, cookbooks, reference material, and travel books, for example, but probably won’t affect novels. The article repeats Amazon’s claim of increased sales:
It says that sales of books with Search Inside features have grown faster than sales of its other books.
Yet the claim is not challenged in any way. Even if sales of books participating in Search Inside are higher than those books not participating, one would have to control for other confounding factors, such as marketing, publishers, etc.