diff --git a/src/calibre/library/server/browse.py b/src/calibre/library/server/browse.py
index bffeb33829..ef6b8f3f3c 100644
--- a/src/calibre/library/server/browse.py
+++ b/src/calibre/library/server/browse.py
@@ -291,7 +291,7 @@ class BrowseServer(object):
             lp = force_unicode(lp, filesystem_encoding)
         ans = ans.replace('{library_name}', xml(os.path.basename(lp)))
         ans = ans.replace('{library_path}', xml(lp, True))
-        ans = ans.replace('{initial_search}', initial_search)
+        ans = ans.replace('{initial_search}', xml(initial_search, attribute=True))
         return ans
 
     @property