How can you sell more ebooks and audiobooks on Google Play Books to the global market? How can you optimize your books so they are more likely to be discovered? How might auto-narrated audiobooks help expand the market? All this and more in today's interview with Ryan Dingler from Google. Ryan Dingler is a product manager at Google, and also writes about the intersection of technology and business. You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes * The difference between Google Books and Google Play Books * How searching and purchasing books works on Android * Market penetration of Android devices and global reach of Google Play Books * Publishing books on Google Play Books and international pricing * Advantages of publishing direct with Google Play Books * The importance of good metadata for marketing books * AI-narrated audiobooks and when they might be available for authors You can find Google Play Books at play.google.com/store/books and you can publish at Play.google.com/books/publish/u/0/ [You can buy my ebooks and audiobooks on Google Play — non-fiction as Joanna Penn, and fiction as J.F.Penn] Transcript of Interview with Ryan Dingler Joanna Penn: Ryan Dingler is a product manager at Google, and also writes about the intersection of technology and business. Welcome Ryan. Ryan Dingler: Hello. Joanna Penn: It's great to have you on the show. So first up, I have been having a little read of your blog. Tell us a bit more about you and why you're so interested in books and technology. Ryan Dingler: Maybe first I'll talk about my background. I am an avid reader of books myself, even before I got into this job, I mostly read nonfiction, although I do enjoy quite a bit of sci-fi and can definitely go on a binge there. One thing that is unique that I have been able to do is merge my interest in books with my actual job, especially as it relates to technology. As a product manager at Google, I work to develop products for a lot of our users, both on the publisher side and on the consumer side. So it's been quite interesting to see how books can interplay with technology. Books have a long history with technology dating back to the printing press in the 15th century and really disseminating information. I see my role as doing that today. Maybe on a little bit smaller scale, but allowing anyone to publish their books on our storefront and purchase it and read it in 75 countries.   Joanna Penn: Fantastic. You mentioned 75 countries there, and I think this is the biggest issue I see with many self publishers. Obviously there's a huge market in America, but I feel like everyone just thinks America is everything. Give us an overview of Google Play Books in the global ebook ecosystem. Obviously we're not going to list 75 countries. Where does Google Play Books perform best and give us an idea about the Android ecosystem as well. Ryan Dingler: I think the best place to start actually is to talk about Google in general.