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Book Publishers Agree to Online Browsing

Posted by Zonk on from the online-is-the-best-line dept.

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."

8 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. About time... by crazyjeremy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:About time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I second that, I end up downloading homemade bootlegs of technical books when deciding which one I am going to purchase. I still end up going and paying full price in the bookstore, but I dont have to feel like I'm in the way as I stand in the aisle at B&N reading a chapter of each book on a subject trying to figure out which author is best for me.

    2. Re:About time... by glitch23 · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's silly to spend cash on a book if you're not certain it's the right one...

      I know how you feel. I use the same philosophy with my women.

      --
      this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
  2. Baen by flyingfsck · · Score: 4, Informative

    Baen has been doing this for years: http://www.baen.com/library/

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  3. Aggregate! by gbulmash · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

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    Start a happiness pandemic
  4. I'd be more impressed... by Grendel+Drago · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... 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
  5. Re:Finally! by hackershandbook · · Score: 3, Informative

    Some of us "get it" - but we have been here for a number of years and don't have vast amounts of money tied up in copyright and intellectual property rights. The first and most important thing is to *own your property* My deal with Carlton gives me absolute freedom with the text I wrote - it only stamps on publishers who might pirate the book - hence the fact that the entire HTML-ised version of "Complete Hackers Handbook" is available for free. I own it - I can do what I want with it - lets keep it that way .... Creative Copyright is a great tool also - but if you get signed to a publisher - make sure you own what you created ...

  6. Linking to books to increase sales by frisket · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It's not that far of a stretch to imagine a person searching for a book, finding something else and then buying both books."

    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.