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Book Publishers Agree to Online Browsing
eldavojohn writes "Random House & HarperCollins have agreed to allow book browsing and searching on all their books. According to the article, 'Book publishers are to trying to update their businesses as more young readers consume media via the Web, a trend that already has affected the music, movie and newspaper industries.' I am definitely looking forward to more publishers following suit. It's not that far of a stretch to imagine a person searching for a book, finding something else and then buying both books."
Finally these people are starting to get it. (how many years has the web been around now?)
It's about time! Now I hope they make it simple to use and search (Amazon's is clunky, only shows a couple pages and incompatible with many browsers.) When I'm purchasing online, I will ONLY buy books that I am familiar with especially when it's a technical book. It's silly to spend cash on a book if you're not certain it's the right one...
Funnypics
MAFIAA take notice! (this one's on the house)
...simply make the books viewable just enough to let purchasers make a decision, but "painful" enough to read for those want to be cheap.
Baen has been doing this for years: http://www.baen.com/library/
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Great, so they'll let you search their books... through their interface on their site. So if I wanted to search through multiple publishers, if they all follow this example, I'll have to go search each publisher separately. Pardon me if I'm not doing cartwheels.
I'd say that eventually someone will engineer a metasearch that hits each publisher's search engine with queries and then either screenscrapes or does some other jujumagumbo to try to extract pertinent info from each set and create some semblance of organization, but I'll bet you that the Terms and Conditions on each publisher's site prohibit this and IF someone creates such a beast, they'll be seeing the C&D's come flying in.
When all is said and done, searching one publisher's catalog at a time is of limited usefulness. And while this may represent a step in the right direction, it also shows that the avatar of most major IP owners is still a kid in the midst of its terrible twos, shouting "MINE!"
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
... if they released their content to Google Book Search. It's not really that useful for me if it's not integrated with a larger search engine--and I'll wager their interface ends up being not nearly as clean or useful as Google's. It might, but it's not likely.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I can't wait to see what kind of windows only browser plugin they come up with to do this...
(Hey, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, but I doubt it).
Why didn't they go through a single company/entity that has a track record of reliable search? Each to their own isn't really going to help. Unlike music, books can be considered physical things, and many people, myself included do _not_ like reading books online. If I like a book for a partiuclar topic, I will buy it.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Hollywood has the MPAA, music companies have the RIAA, software companies have BSA. So who will this deal spawn?
What would be the incentive to buy a book then if you get yourself a tablet PC and live in an area with wireless LAN? You could even write your own additional software to make the text display just the way you like it. Unless you are a big fan of the look and feel of books.
The internet has become the new Gutenberg printing press: now copying and distributing information can be done with virtually no effort at all.
This is the crux of the copyright discussion we are having these times. How, in the long run, will the publishers and more importantly the authors make money from their craft? In the past artists and scientists were funded by aristocrats and kings who usually did not have to worry about such expenses. Nowadays in our capitalist privatized systems who will feed our scientists and artists? The common man? He's too much concerned with feeding himself (or buying himself a sports car he can't drive).
So the only logical solution, it seems, is to increase law enforcement, to prevent 'illegal use of information' (how it hurts to write such words) with any means necessary.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
So what's the difference, you ask? People who are involved in rather esoteric research areas, which includes things like stem cell research for example, release this stuff among themselves. Peer review is all well and good, but this material is released far before it achieves journal publication. This is both good and bad. It's good because it gets distributed. It's bad because the peer-review simply isn't there _except_ for the investigator's colleagues critisizing it.
In other words, the research community has become somewhat self-contained itself. We're all too aware of the ridiculous biases that exist in the "public" sector (in other words, those people who tow some party line because it gets them more funding).
One thing that should be illegal is Recommended Retail Prices and Manufacturers Retail Price "guides" for price control of books (and indeed any other product including computer / console games). It is up to the retailer to decide what price they wish to sell it at. If they ask too much people just walk out and order elsewhere or online. If they ask less then they get more customers. Isnt that what competition is about?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
I don't understand what you're talking about. Google Books offers a full text book search that lets you see context without reading the entire book. It works just like the service discussed in the article, except it has books from multiple publishers.
That's not the only business model, either. If the text is accessible online, then publishers could allow deep linking into a book. That way you could point someone at a quote, or a section, or a page, even just a phrase, without the need for them to download the entire thing. Exposing someone to a book this way is an excellent opportunity to sell it to them. Assuming the books are in SGML or XML, implementing this method is almost trivial.
I can't help but feel that if they actually make a good service which allows browsing and searching on all their books free of charge (i.e. you can read an entire book without paying for it) then this will lose them money! Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of printed books, but I'm also an impoverished student - if I can get it for free I'm unlikely to pay for it. As the article says they're trying to target younger people who are more used to the web, the same probably applies. However I guess the chances of them providing a free system that is actually good enough to use in this fashion is pretty slim given current examples....
"Everlasting peace will come to Earth when the last man kills the last but one." - Adolf Hitler
Oh come on, you know how these discussions go. Creative people will be able to make money through "some more imaginative model". You just need to get hip to the new way of doing things.
I mean, no one will take advantage of the situation and try to get away with not paying for things. Apparently, there was one guy - once - who started downloading instead of buying his music. But apart from that guy, people only download to see if they like the thing, and if they do, they buy it.
I wish people like you would wake up and get hip to the inevitable change that happening what with these "new models" that are coming along.
Besides, who do these musicians and writers think they are, *demanding* that I pay them money when I am merely doing what I want with my freedoms? They'll be taken care of, financially, "in some way".
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
I'm not entirely sure how they expect to be able to legally do this. I mean, this was one of the things that got Google into trouble with their book search service: they accepted publishers' words that they had the legal right to grant permission for this, when in many (if not most) cases, only the authors of the books have the necessary legal rights to put copies of them online. Most publishing contracts, even now, do not grant the publisher permission to do this. Copyright remains with the authors in most cases.
Are you having the same discussion the rest of us are? I suggested that this initiative would be more useful if it were integrated with Google Book Search. nephridium thought I meant that they should all be available in a full-view format, which I didn't say. (I didn't explicitly say they should be restricted, but copyrighted books already are on Google Book Search.) sirambrose pointed out that Google Book Search doesn't work like that. Where exactly were these claims made?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I do not 'consume' media. I read books. The books are there after I've read them. They are not 'consumed'. Additionally, I write things about books, and I write things in general. Relegating me to the passive role of 'consumer' is demeaning. I am a customer, not a consumer. The important relationship I have with Harper Collins is that I buy the books they produce. This makes me a customer.
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Brutha.
Nor when you vote are you a mere constituent, resident of some gerrimandered abstraction, but an active participant in the political nation: a citizen.
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