Google gets into the ebook biz, for real this time
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Jun 1st 2009 7:46PM
posted Jun 1st 2009 7:46PM
We've known that Google has designs on the ebook market for quite a while, and now Tom Turvey (the company's director of strategic partnerships) has said that the program will be ready by the end of 2009. Details are still rather sketchy, but according to The New York Times, the plan involves selling the books at prices set by the publisher -- as opposed to the rather strict Amazon pricing guidelines that sees most Kindle titles selling for $9.99 (to the chagrin of many publishers). In addition, the company will be selling readers online access to the titles. On one hand, this means that access to your books won't be limited to specific devices, but it will require Internet access and some sort of off-line caching (presumably Google Gears). This news has us wondering if we weren't a bit hasty in putting down the money for Danielle Steel's limited edition Sony Reader. Aww, who are we kidding? You know we can't get enough of those Sisters.
[Via Paid Content]
[Via Paid Content]
Just another business that Google will gobble up by being brilliant. They can't help it!
gOMNOMNOMNOM
@David
Thanks for setting the record straight... I read about 1 book each week and i see ton's of people at the bookstore... then again as you stated Brian must be an babling idiot.
Hey Engadget, Next time before you decide to bash other businesses products like the Palm Pre or anything MS, perhaps you should dedicate more time on your comment system and fix it. I replied to David below and it posted up here WTF?
Too quick to conclude that Google is always brilliant. Yes, they sure can be. But yes, they sure can also try and fail. I for one, dont see Google winning the book war yet. The book war is not just about hosting books on server farms - it is also about devices. And more fundamentally, it is about books and readers (people). Besides, Google will likely soon reach it's knee bend of the brilliance curve. 10 years of phenomenal growth is a considerable time at the top.
1000 years this technology would've been world changing, now people don't even read,period physical or digital media. I read sometimes on my Ipod touch so I'm optimistic about where this is going.
1000 years ago*
mmm... my bet is in 75 years paper books will be a luxury. I guess we will see E-inked cereal box some day!
Haaaa... mmm... 1000 years ago it was the dark ages... The church was burning greek litterature as heretic. I would not like to be the one with a Ebook reader in the pocket at that troubled era. It was like... WrestleMania power 10 all around the globe!!
Paper is not going anywhere.
If records are seeing a spike in sales, then books are not going anywhere, anytime soon.
This whole "people don't read" thing? You might want to let Stephen King, Stephenie Meyers and J.K. Rowling know. Those cats make more from their books than from the very popular movies made from them. Or maybe you should tell all the people running the interesting book blogs all over this internet thing. Or Amazon, that incredibly successful retailer that built a business of sending books to people's homes.
While you're at it, you might want to look up the definition of solipsism. Just because something's true for you, that doesn't make it true for everyone. You embarrass yourself when you say people don't read. This is a golden age of literature. The shelves of any bookstore you go into are filled with more stuff (and more good stuff, despite ninety percent of its being crap) than at any time in history.
A lot of people read. A lot of other people are mouth-breathing idiots who say nobody reads.
Wow. Guess you pushed my button, huh?
'people don't read'
I know, I can't believe I read your comment. Next time beam it to my mind, mmmk?
Are you sure it wasn't over 9000 years ago?
Yay! Hopefully this gets teamed with a nice google-made ereader for Android. jjreader is the best I've found so far but it's not perfect. Stoked!
If Amazon didn't have such a huge presence in Seattle, I'd think it was a Canadian company.
Now if someone would cut a deal to give public libraries access to more ebooks - I would pay for that!
They will find a way...
Sadly the advance in technologies probably mean the end of libraries as we know them.
Actually they do already. Maybe you just didn't look at all. The big company doing this nowadays is:
http://www.overdrive.com/
which, if you check the first heading at their site, distributes and licenses digital distribution of books and media to libraries. I myself have downloaded several to read to my sony reader already through this. I'm not sure how well this works on the other devices, but at least for the sony reader the libraries are still a great place to check books out.
i don't see the death of paper anytime soon, reading on an lcd is more painful on the eye than reading on paper
If I could search + access science journals through Goog, I would be crazy-happy. Many of the sites that list original scientific papers are hard to use, or have terrible search features -- especially if you don't know what you want.
First of all, I'm only ever going to read for any extended period on an e-ink display, so they better have some plan or api for devices.
And for me one of the biggest e-book advantages is the scalability. Google books are very much OCR'd but you always get the scan, which isn't as good as rerendering it and won't use the full display, and uses more data.
Typical Engadget making every post about Danielle Steel.
Tom Turkey?!! aaaanyway tech is making 'books' more accessible than ever and google will give it another kick forward.. Reading isn't going anywhere. Spelling, diction, and punctuation are the ones that are really headed for the trash heap
Great, so now the publishers can charge an arm and a leg for an e-book that costs them next to nothing to distribute.
Am I the only one thinking 9.99 is too much to pay for a non-physical book that you can't lend out, etc. ?
So what exactly does a "publisher" do when they don't print and distribute paper anymore? Why won't authors upload directly to Amazon, set their own price, and collect 70% of revenue?
If authors need marketing help, they could hire a specialized book marketing firm (formerly known as a publisher) to take out ads in...bookstores? newspapers? Or do authors just give Amazon an extra cut to get banner ad placement in the Kindle store?
Publishers do a lot beyond physical production, distribution and sales -- which incidentally is a lot by itself. In a digital model, you'll probably see publishers focusing more on the legal and editorial end, and being valued for their relationships with the various distributors. An author who spends a lot of time marketing and handling contracts is an author who isn't writing.
And I thought the whole point of going digital is that we not only save a few trees, but we can also save some $$$? If selling a Kindle version for $9.99 is at a loss, can someone explain why lots of paperbacks can be bought from Amazon for less than that? Yes, it's Google that is selling this time, but they are going to sell the same text for more than what Amazon charges. What's there to be excited about when it sounds like it might be easier on the eyes and the pocketbook to get a dead tree version?
I guess publishers would be behind this because they would face no downward pressure on their arbitrarily-decided prices. They may abandon Amazon ebooks if they see this as a replacement more willing to agree to their prices. Kind of like if music publishers directly decided prices on iTunes.
I'm looking forward to publishers complaining that they can't sell their $175 textbooks because of eBook piracy.
Good, I like e-books :) Dont have a Kindle... but read em on my bberry. Keep em comin.
heh, 1000 years ago, no one could READ!
Yeah, reading may indeed be a dying art. I have two sons, one quite brilliant. Neither one of them has read a novel unless forced to by high school or college since the Goosebumps days. Both can READ but there is too many other things to occupy them. Err, take that back, they LISTEN to audio books in the car on long trips.
My two sisters and I are constant readers but are in our late 50's or early 60's and grew up in a time when there was only 3 TV stations to our home and music was expensive on vinyl. Reading was THE way to wile away the time.
On my SONY e-reader, I have read ELEVEN novels in the past week alone. Do not be fooled. For those of use who DO read, ebook readers will take over, guaranteed.
I just wish I could get one that could replace all my large nonfiction books that contain a lot of color photos and illustrations. I would then PDF my bookshelves and empty them.
I have publishes a book "Escaping Islam". I would like to know how I can have my book sold by Google in their future Ebbk Store.
Any assistance shall greatly be appreciated.
Author@EscapingIslam.com