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Google Offering Print Versions of Online Books
carluva writes "Google is teaming up with On Demand Books to offer paperback versions of its collection of over 2 million public domain books. The books will be able to be printed using ODB's Espresso Book Machine, which is already in use at several book stores and libraries and can print and bind a complete, paperback copy of a 300-page book in less than 5 minutes. Google and ODB each get $1 in royalties per book sold (Google has pledged to donate its proceeds to charities and nonprofit organizations). See also ODB's PDF press release."
I can download public domain books to my Palm.
How long before google starts a service to provide scanned copies of these new dead tree versions online and indexed?
There are LOTS of public domain books that are very hard to get a hold of in paper form. No publisher is going to reprint 200 year old books on obscure topics for which there is a market of 20 people. This makes those books accessible to those that need them, without the economies of scale that publishers rely on.
And pending the much-debated acquisition by Google of orphan books, they'll be a lot more obscure out-of-print books seeing life again.
ODB...still getting paid.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I wonder if they will have any more resolution than the PDFs you can get from their online service. Some of the books have technical drawings that could use ahout 50 - 75 more DPI. Does anyone know if they were scanned in a higher native resolution than what they present online?
This is a wonderful thing. It may make it much easier to publish new, low circulation books as well, since you don't need to reach a critical threshold sales number to make it worth printing. Of course, a 'book' (as in the physical form) may become obsolete over the next few decades as old curmudgeons like me who like reading printed material far more than reading off a screen drop off...
Oh good, another reason to refuse to get an e-book reader.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Assuming, of course, that you use solar energy to power your ebook reader and not batteries...
According to Websters the 14th century:
* Main Entry: 2image
* Function: transitive verb
* Inflected Form(s): imaged; imaging
* Date: 14th century
1 : to call up a mental picture of : imagine
2 : to describe or portray in language especially in a vivid manner
3 a : to create a representation of; also : to form an image of b : to represent symbolically
Of course, he could have also made a simple typo/brain slip.
According to actual research, you're wrong. eBook readers reduce net CO2 emissions.
http://earth2tech.com/2009/08/19/why-the-kindle-is-good-for-the-planet/
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
If Lulu.com were able to strike a deal with Google to be the service provider for this, they would have. Lulu.com is EXPENSIVE for creating books. It's not clear what Google is planning on charging, but buying through Lulu.com costs a minimum of about $5 and that's without making a profit. If Google and the ODB are truly only scamming $2 off the top of sales then a comparable price compared to Lulu.com would be $7. I'd expect the price point for a Google/ODB copy to be closer to $4-5 to ensure nobody can come in and compete with them. And while I could be wrong, I'd expect Google/ODB to charge fair prices for all equivalent reproductions with no books costing some ridiculous amount "just because".
I'd also like to point out, Google/ODB books will be pure utility based on the picture in TFA. It seems like cover design has been thrown out the window and the paper they use is probably going to be as cheap as possible. This will lead to books that people would rather dispose (or donate) after they are done. So, it looks like you won't be building a library of Google printed books.
True, he is just pointing out that such a system already exists, using Project Gutenberg and a different on-demand publishing house.
I guess the question is whether it uses the scans or the OCR'd text as the source for the reprint. If it's the scan, then that right puts it in a different league than the PG suggestion.
This guy's the limit!
>> Google is teaming up with On Demand Books to offer paperback versions of its collection of over 2 million public domain books
So... this is the long tail in action?
And can I order these for delivery from the Google website?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
There is already a site offering POD services for both Google Books and Internet Archive for over two years and it is done at cost:
PublicDomainReprints.org
Actually, I'd be curious as to a reference for this. While I'm sure you are right once you start talking about 1000's of books, I'm equally sure the production of 1 paperback book is not 'extremely wasteful and bad for the environment' compared to one e-book reader. The key, of course, is how many books you read on your e-book reader before it, too, becomes e-waste.
A little googling revealed this Master's Thesis on exactly this topic. I haven't read it in-depth yet, but it looks to strongly favor e-readers.
Sigh - I LIKE my printed books.
If you read the comments section of that link you see it isn't as clearcut as the article makes it seem. Even if the emissions end up on the plus side, the disposal and/or recycling of paper vs batteries probably offsets it.
Thanks for lousy the AP article. Let's see...for a story about a great technology used to print books, I'll submit a link to a website read by those most hostile to science/technology, those who are not to keen about books that cover anything outside their narrow ideological realm. AND it's a friggin AP release. thank you so much for the effort!
Do they realize it could be used to print books about queers and such?!?!? Oh dear god nooooo... /sarcasm
yeah, mod me -1024 flamebait. Or, try this link http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/google-books-publish-on-demand/ or this one http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10355318-265.html
I'm one of those people that greatly savors a paper book. I have a nice little library of books that I keep around on two bookcases, and every now and then I'll browse over the shelves and go "Oh yea, I haven't read this one in 10 years, it deserves another go round." I also have a good sized collection of oversized art and photography books. These are particularly well suited to a permanent print format.
The thing is, if a major catastrophic event breaks down modern civilization, little to none of this electronic stuff is going to survive. There will be a big black hole, made especially worse with anything that was encrypted with DRM.
Think about things from antiquity that have survived to modern day - very well stored paper books, scrolls and things made out of clay, granite, stone and marble and very occasionally steel. That's about it.
It's not clear what Google is planning on charging...
FTA, about $8 per book (including the pair of $1 fees going to ODB and Google), although a definite price hasn't been set.
$8 seems pretty fair to me...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Do you know if the actual report is available? I'm curious as to whether they are taking into account the carbon used for the powering of the kindle and the environmental impact of disposing a kindle and it's battery vs the ability to recycle the paper from books. It'd also be interested to know who funded the study, I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon's name was on there
It can never be an exact comparison. Think about those used textbooks you used to get in college. Those things were probably used by dozens of other students. The environmental cost of that book essentially stops immediately after it is created. The same title on eBook on the other hand has continuing cost every time it is read.
Meanwhile google's doing the smartest move: they're donating their $1 to charity. So both a: doing a good cause and b: earning themselves a tax break.
That's what I call smart capitalism.
I do think the book deal needs to have some of the issues kinked out, but overall google is taking this in a very smart way.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1372965&cid=29458445
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
This is slashdot, not Digg. If someone here was to make a joke about ODB, it would more likely have something to do with ODBC being originally developed by Microsoft, yet ODB is publishing books with Google and that conundrum is leading to the end of civilization as we know it, or something.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
on demand printing started picking up.
really, I shoudl be able to go to a bok store and get the book I want made on the spot. At software stores, they should burn the software on demand.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Possibly, but this at least eliminates the need for shipping the printed books (which weigh a LOT) all over the world. Plus, for me at least, I can only spend maybe five minutes at a time reading from a computer screenâ"and I'm even a Gen Y computer programmer. There's something about reading from a computer screen that is just a lot harder than reading from a paper.
I think about the same thing with our newspapers, photographs, music, etc. My father has hundreds of slides of us as kids. Even if the technology of a slide machine goes away it is still possible to view those pictures. Can't say the same thing for all the pictures I've take on recent vacations - some of which I probably haven't backed up.
So will all the books be $2 plus shipping?
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Maybe because Google knows that you aren't likely to write a $1 check to charity each time you buy a book, and it can make a bigger impact donating in larger sums.
I'm also completely confident still getting a financial incentive of the tax write-off for donations to charity while gaining some moral high-ground on those opposed to them having so much control over books has absolutely nothing to do with it. *shifty eyes*
I use IE 8 at work, the lack of built in spell check is epic fail.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
According to actual research, you're wrong. eBook readers reduce net CO2 emissions.
The solution is to scale up the number of books you're talking about. If you have enough, you can do what I do and line the walls with them, thus increasing the effective insulation of your home. :)
Tax deductions. If they reduce the price by a $1 they receive absolutely no benefit. By taking your dollar and then donating to a charity they get a tax deduction.
The same title on eBook on the other hand has continuing cost every time it is read.
Unless you're reading it on a PC (as I have spent long hours doing, don't get me wrong) the cost is very low, because most of the devices you'd actually want to read an eBook on are very low-power. I have an LED spot that I use as a late night reading light, and it only consumes 4W, way less than my netbook; at idle and dimmed screen, over 10W. (Another netbook here uses right about spot on 10W at idle.) But if you have an e-Ink device with an LED side-light then your power consumption is very low, and if you're getting that power at night then the electricity is basically going to waste otherwise, it's literally being sunk into carbon piles and crap like that. Why we can't be using it to make carbon fibers or something, I'll never know. A certain amount of that does go on, but not nearly enough...)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm going to respect the slashdot tradition of bad car analogies, here...
And many people greatly savor riding horses. That didn't stop the automobile.
Yes, with the breakdown of civilization, the horse riders will be in better shape, too. Do you ride a horse to prepare for this potential catastrophe?
At any rate, flash drives containing thousands of books each spread accross the entire earth are actually better for archival purposes than paper. We can never have another burning of the library at Alexandria; there are too many copies. And the costs of perfectly preserving old data are effectively zero, as storage costs continue to plummet. We don't need monks dutifully making copies of scrolls as the scrolls age. We just copy our book collections instantly and flawlessly to the new storage tech as it becomes available.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Well spell check wouldn't have helped you there. Even grammar check would have give you a pass probably. There was no reason for the guy to call you out on it. I am pretty sure everybody reading it understood what you meant and knew it to be a typo.
On the other hand, he made himself look like an idiot for not knowing that image actually can be used as a verb (especially somebody reading a tech forum - has he never imaged a computer?).
using an electronic device is not even close to being greener than the cost of producing something from paper.
Difference: we grow the trees we use to make paper, thus the CO2 cost is only twice: negatively (loss) upon creation (growing the tree, not processing the paper), and upon recycling (positively (gain). Does this CO2 get released into the atmosphere? No. The paper manufacturers actually use a techniques to recycle the same CO2 back to power the machines used to produce the paper, net 0. KapStone paper is a company I can cite which does this. They are self sufficient and are carbon neutral.
With an ebook, your energy usage is shared with all your books, but you can infinitely go back and read an old book and add more energy cost/usage, not to mention the battery disposal issues. We have energy in great quantities in the world, but it is not all 100% efficient nor free.
Have you ever heard of producing the plastics in a kindle being carbon neutral or being environmentally friendly? Answer is, it's not. Ebooks are better at what they do. That doesn't mean green.
It is good to be green, but to do it in real ways and not simply feel good about it. Lots of people and companies are smart enough to realize that simply "getting rid" of a source of anything that has emissions in some form is not the right approach.
Your concerns are with backlit screens. eBook readers use an entirely different technology: eink. They effectively print pages on demand, erasing the print-out each time you turn the page.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
....Abbie Hoffman isn't going to appreciate this, me thinks.
If I were running this show, I'd offer the purchaser to buy one of three products at the time of purchase. One would be the low-grade book that costs five bucks. The next would be a higher-grade book suitable for rebinding with a decent cover for ten bucks. If you don't like it that much, you don't have to jump up to the better binding. Then you could order a nicer, more expensive version through the post, media mail, as the third level. I'd really rather have this than have shelves full of books; I see the appeal of the traditional bookstore though, and this could potentially save a lot of endangered small bookstores by bringing them relevance, if you could purchase other titles through it as well.
OMFG this comment will not get any better two minutes from now, submit already :(
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm in the same boat - my girlfriend and I have a combined library of around 2,000 books. There is a certain pleasure in browsing around, finding something you haven't read for a long time (or was from her library rather than mine)...
I realize that just about every argument I come up with for the superiority of printed books is pretty weak; the only four that are significant are 1) Books (good ones) can last 100's of years, 2) No power source needed, 3) Readability better (600 dpi+ vs. 160 dpi for typical e-book readers), 4) Better chance to survive civilization collapses.
Even these items are a bit of a stretch, and are likely to change within a decade. I suppose people with actual, physical libraries of books may be considered eccentrics fairly soon....
This is slashdot, not Digg. If someone here was to make a joke about ODB, it would more likely have something to do with ODBC being originally developed by Microsoft, yet ODB is publishing books with Google and that conundrum is leading to the end of civilization as we know it, or something.
This is Slashdot, explaining how both of you managed to miss this post.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You just said that books don't require shipping, and that all of them somehow use zero net carbon in manufacturing. You are undeniably factually incorrect.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
FWIW, there's no tax break to donating cash. Well, there is, but it's outweighed by the fact that you, well, no longer have the cash.
Donating money is a dumb way to make money, unless the returns you get (PR, market-building, etc) outweigh the lost dollars. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea, or a good thing to do -- it's just that the tax writeoff is never more than the amount donated, so net cash impact is never positive.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You are assuming that all the books are recopied on a regular basis. NASA has had quite a bit of trouble retreving information from the magnetic tapes which stored the data from the Apollo missions, not so much because the tapes demagnetized, but because no records documenting the format of those tapes were located, and the designers of those formats weren't around anymore. Format loss is a signficant problem in the long term. In 50 years, do you think USB ports, FAT32 formatted flash-drives and UTF-8 will all still be in common use? Whenever I see someone use the words, 'never', ' instantly', and 'flawlessly' and other absolutes, I get suspicious of their argument. When it comes to preserving things for durations beyond a human lifespan, electronics are still relatively untested in practice.
But deep down inside, I know that e-books will probably win the day in the next decade or two; much like horses, physical books will probably become a niche item someday. Unless we screw them up royally with DRM or something. Amazing Xerox didn't appoint an armed guard by each photocopier they made to protect against possible copyright violations!
As long as those thousands of copies are not DRM encrypted.
Also, all the books I own were mass produced using the printing press, something the monk scholars did not have. So there already are thousands of copies of the books I have circulating around. Bad analogy is right. Most good old books do not get thrown away or destroyed on purpose, they are passed around, bought and sold and remain in private collections and in libraries. The electronic books kept on a thumb drive have the same chance of being lost by fire, flood or other natural cause as one copy of a press book, with the further chance that there could be no electricity or computers to read them by down the road.
With a paper book, it takes only the book itself and the knowledge to interpret the letters to read it. With an e-book, you need another device that relies on an electricity grid to recharge or power it. That other device can also break down over time (older motherboards almost always become unusable without repair thanks to capacitor and other semiconducter breakdowns). This creates an untenable chain of requirements to keep them in readable order in a world devoid of technological infrastructure.
It's a dumb way to make money, but google has enough of it. it is a good way to buy reputation capital as well as enforcing their company mission of making information accessible and not being evil.
really, I shoudl be able to go to a bok store and get the book I want made on the spot. At software stores, they should burn the software on demand.
For book stores, yes, good idea. But software stores are basically obsolete. Geekoid, I don't know what country you live in, but in most industrialized countries, this would already be obsolete for software. The difference between the two markets is one of tactile preference; most people prefer to read paper pages still. But with software, there's no such factor. Software is software, no matter who burns it for you. And there simply aren't enough dial-up only users left to justify a physical software store based on convenience. Widespread broadband killed places like the old mall software chains. Google for "software shops in..." and the suggestion box is filled mostly with third world cities where broadband isn't widespread yet. Software is a tough brick-and-mortar business in the US, even for places like Office Depot now. If it's cheap enough... say, under a hundred bucks or so, you just download it yourself and pay via paypal or credit card. If it's very expensive, then you're planning the purchase, and will order via mail usually. On-demand software burning would have been a great idea during the dial-up era. But now it would be like "Hey, I've got this great idea for propulsion... it's called the steam engine!".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Your NASA example demonstrates the opposite of what you think it does. NASA had only a single copy of some data. That's a risky proposition no matter what the technology. But other data NASA tried to recover--the moon landing footage--actually was recovered because there were multiple copies. This is the case with ebooks today.
With thousands of copies of ebooks living of flash chips, RAIDs, optical disks, and magnetic disks throughout the Earth and the nearby celestial bodies, it won't be hard to recover old data; it will be hard to destroy old data. Think of Linus's quote about how he does backups, if you aren't following me ;-)
As for formats of data: most data will be copied from old tech to new as new tech becomes available. I don't need a floppy disk reader to read the documents I wrote ten years ago. I moved them along with all my other data to my NAS. But even supposing the unlikely scenario in which only copy of some data is on a flash chip with an outdated interface, you must admit that would be easier to access in the future than using electron microscopes and other fancy imaging techniques archaeologists are already using on scrolls.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Yay! at any of a handful of US locations! Great!
Unfortunately the machine to print these books starts around $80k (slow black and white printer) goes to $100k (fast color printer) (does not include instillation, training, or a 10mbit internet connection with a static IP)... I'm guessing that the rate of new instillation won't be all that great for quite some time... I'll be waiting a long while (or driving more than 6 hours) to get my printed, out-of-print books...
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
Agreed. Print on demand is much more efficient in regards to resource utilization. Many books printed today do not sell completely and are returned to the publisher. They then tear off the covers, rendering them un-sellable. Hopefully these books are recycled into pulp for making more books.
With POD (print on demand) publishing, you get no wastage. The downside is the higher cost to publish a POD book. However, at the $8 level, depending on the page count or usefulness of the content, that price is within the relm of the reasonable. In another post on this topic I mentioned how much more it costs to do a full color photo book using POD publishing, which is way out of line with how much it costs to do a mass produced printing press version of same.
I have a feeling that we will not see a 100% electronic book world in our future, it will be a mix of POD and electronic. Even best-sellers could be POD produced at the store for anyone who wants them. No more inventory problems, except for bulk paper and ink supplies.
either your tax system is retarded OR you really don't get how tax deductions work. If you donate you don't pay tax on your donation, you however don't get more money back than if you had never had that money at all.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
And your mass-produced paperbacks will be yellowed flakes in a 100-200 years or so.
I've got books less than 50 years old that are already yellow and brittle, despite the lack of sunlight and low humidity in my proverbial basement.
Dozens? Ha, Engineering books MAY have gotten used once before they were 'out of date'.
You're better off just keeping your used books. (Advice I wish I didn't listen to). Because the books are laid out in the exact way you learned it. The few books I did keep I can open my books nearly straight to the page of the topic I'm interested in.
I printed that web page out, then placed it on my energy-hogging scanner, OCRd it, converted it to PDF and then read it on my Sony Reader - only to realize it was about the Kindle. What a waste.
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
I don't have descendants, though having them in the future is not out of the question. Still, I like to think that 50 or 100 years after my death, someone might stumble across a poem or something that I've written.
Ok, so that's artist's hubris, and pretty unlikely. I'd still like to see memes and works I like survive, even if they didn't hatch in my brain. I'd like someone to read Tennyson's "Ulysses" 50 or 100 years after my death, and have the feeling, the experience, that it evokes in me.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Um, my friend...if your "library" fits on two bookcases, you are not one of those people that greatly savors a paper book. :-) Come back when vistors aren't sure if they've found your house, or a used book store.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
My descendants you insensitive clod ;)
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
an EMP pulse causes hard drives that are off
technically? yes.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
it is a good way to buy reputation capital...
Reputation capital. Such a great concept. If only we could survive on reputation capital, the world would be a much better place.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
I've been awaiting a long time for Google to deliver on their Gmail Paper product. http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html Now with their printers in place it should be easy for them to deliver my email in hard copy.
I have a few friends with large book collections. I consider them hoarders. I only keep books that I really like and also feel would bring benefit to read or reference again down the road. That narrows it down quite a bit. The only legitimate excuse for a giant library is if you are an academic researcher or an author. A good writer is a good reader, as they say. I am not a writer so I have no such need to keep things on file like that.
I went through a phase in my life where I collected a bunch of crap, and now I'm moving past that. Less is more, within moderation. :)
-Mike
When you can get a tablet that will take a decent stylus or your finger, and has e-Ink but does video, THAT is going to revolutionize reading.
No, what is going to revolutionize reading is not the device but the DRM. When you can read any electronic book on a multitude of devices without DRM and format getting in the way, that will revolutionize reading. As it stands now proprietary hardware lock-in stinks and needs to be done away with fast if e-books are to surpass the dead tree kind.
Sounds fair to me too. These include rare and out-of-print works. The kind of works that automatically cost $100 extra just because the target customer is university libraries who can afford it.
Unless things have changed in the past five years, that's not entirely accurate. What actually happened was: for mass market paperback books (the most common type), we'd strip the covers in the store, sort the covers by publishing house (to mail back once we had enough to be worth the time), then the employees would typically pick through the coverless books and take a couple for personal enjoyment, then the rest went out with the trash.
The same process was applied to magazines, except that was happening a lot more frequently (we'd get a shipment of magazines at least once or twice a week).
With hardcover and trade paper books, the unbought stock was mailed back to the publisher, or swapped between stores depending on quantity, age, and need.
At the location where I worked there was only one dumpster, and absolutely no recycling went on aside from the store employees picking through the piles and taking what they wanted before the remainder was thrown out.
Of course, if you ever special order anything then someone from corporate would decide there was a market for it and restock the store once you bought your copy; this frequently meant that after I would special order some title for myself, we would have 2 or 3 sit on the shelves for months before we had to strip-cover and discard them. Print-on-demand would have been very nice for those sorts of purchase.
What often happens is they get donated to book bank-type programs which give away the books for free. I've been volunteering at one for a few years, and we get a lot of free books from publishers like that.
That may be part of it; though I'm a poet, my style is definitely informed by the prose I read. And certainly my book collection has swelled a bit the past few years as I've been doing research for the historical sections of my non-fiction book. Though for that I've also made extensive use of Google Books, the Sacred Texts archive, and Project Gutenberg, as well as some more specialized sites. Nothing like being able to find rare, long out-of-print original sources on-line.
Also many of my books pertain to my "other jobs", references related to martial arts and acupressure and massage. (For the day job, software, I have a few dead trees, but most of them I acquired pre-Web, or at least back in the days of dial-up.)
But I do enjoy just having books around. I prefer "collector" to "hoarder", thank you very much. :-)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
i think you'll find the catalog is called google and can be found on this internet thing you may have met.... love this idea of On Demand Books. Until I get a good e-reader I guess. But i do love having a house full of dead trees.
There's more environmental cost to an eBook than power. There's the metals used in making it, some of which are very damaging, there's the delivery of the components and the cost of transporting them and the finished device, there's the batteries, with their poisonous metals, there's the upgrade/replacement cycle (because lets face it us gadget freaks want the latest and greatest every few years), etc.
Don't know why this is modded troll. Its correct. You can't make money with donations. Its all about PR in this case. Or perhaps they really just wanted to do something nice...
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
One strategy that they may be considering is giving this money away through a network of foundations. This way they can steer the money to organizations who are working in favor of Google and friend's own interests.
These could be public interest groups that lobby or advocate for policy friendly to this business model or even academic research that might pertain to future improvements on the various technologies.
They aren't going to just give all this money to little bald kids for photo ops, but some will probably go there, too. The non-profit sector is large (in the US) and enjoys favored status and lower operating costs. There are many hungry proposal writers out there who will churn out applications faster than this thing can print them.
Someone more familiar with this business niche could probably paint a better picture, but I'll bet you one Google Dollar (no cash value) the truth lies somewhere that way.
what the fuck are you talking about. If they reduce the price by a $1 they receive absolutely no benefit. By taking your dollar and then donating to a charity they receive absolutely no benefit.
The reason it is tax-deductible is so that they don't have to take your dollar, pay 30 cents tax on it, donate $1 to charity, and be 30 cents in the red for the privilege. That doesn't make sense.
The manufacturing process is indeed carbon neutral. It's in every paper manufacturing company's interest to do so as it actually diminishes their power usage. Go do some research before you simply label things "factually incorrect", as I was quite correct and happen to know well of the company that I mentioned, which was why I mentioned them.
I can add all sorts of extraneous situations to the kindle too, but then we wouldn't be truly comparing things, would we?
Shipping has something to do with it? Or how did I say that the books don't require shipping? What other words do you wish to put in my mouth?
that tax break can *easily* in many instances add up to more than you would have if you received the money, if it can lower your taxes overall. Also makes for easier end of year tax planning.
Additionally, it's not like the money is going to go directly from the customer to the charity. The money is going to sit in Google's bank account(s) for some amount of time (30 days to a year) before it gets donated. So Google is still going to have an income on the deal. Also, the money still counts as revenue on the balance sheet making Google look better to investors and keeping the stock price up. And, unless there is somehow a contract provision requiring the donation, they can just drop the donation aspect if cash ever becomes an issue.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
good point, its 100% google benefit and I didn't think about that temporary investment idea like how a bank would do it. Makes sense.