Google Takes On Amazon With Own E-Book Store

CWmike writes "Google announced on Thursday that next year it's launching an online e-book store called Google Editions where users will be able to buy digital books that can be read on a range of gadgets, including e-book readers, laptops, and cell phones. Press reports out of Germany, where it was announced, note that Google plans to offer up half a million e-books from the get-go. Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, said, 'The market leader, Amazon, built its position with a closed device, Kindle, which is limited to reading and buying eBooks. It will be interesting to see how well it stacks up against Google's strategy of delivering e-book capabilities via the Web to any device that can connect to the Internet. This gives Google a vastly larger addressable market than what Amazon has built up with Kindle so far.'" The price per book will be set by the publishers, Google says. Google willl turn over 45% of what they take in to the publisher and "the vast majority" of the rest to retailers.

Comments

The format is all that matters

[DrivingBear]

As long as the books they sell are readable on any device they win in my book.

Re:The format is all that matters

[eldavojohn]

As long as the books they sell are readable on any device they win in my book.

From the article:

The books bought from Google, and its partners, would be accessible on any gadget that has a Web browser, including smartphones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops. A book would be accessible offline after the first time it was accessed.

I believe the Kindle has an experimental web browser ... although why pay the premium if Google can offer what Amazon offers? Being a netbook user (and enjoying 7 hours of battery life) I'm very interested in this. My netbook was maybe $75 more than the Kindle.

Re:The format is all that matters

[MBGMorden]

The web browser thing makes sense to me given Google's app layout so far. I doubt you'll be buying a file at all. Instead, you'll probably get another tab on your Google area (akin to Documents, Photos, Reader, etc there are there now), and once you purchase access to a book it'll get tied to your account where you can read it online.

There's still some degree of vendor locking in that all your books would be on their servers, but at least there's no device lock-in.

I've certainly used a variety of devices to read ebooks though. I read The Wizard of Oz (admittedly a short book) on my iPod Touch because it was in a collection of public domain books I bought off the app store for $0.99.

I've read several books on my desktop computer at work, simply because when you have nothing to do, looking at PDF's still looks like you're working. My boss thinks I'm diligently reading something technical while in reality I'm reading "The Time Machine" or some other sci-fi novel :).

Re:The format is all that matters

[Seumas]

As soon as a netbook can fit in my hand and use an e-ink screen, I might be all over that. In the meantime, I really don't want to spend even more hours staring at a big bright back-lit computer screen.

Also, google trying to *add* middemen to the process by involving retailers seems a bit odd, to me. How about google and I cut them out and I just buy it at a discount? I mean, you're not selling a physical service here -- so what are they a "wholesaler" of? Bits?

what's the DRM story?

[TheGratefulNet]

and what file format are they? they say 'browser based'. does that include lynx?

how OPEN is this, really? anyone know?

Why are they paying retailers?

[jhfry]

I don't understand why they would be paying "the vast majority" (of whats left after paying the publisher) to retailers?

I haven't read the article yet, but either the summary is way off, misleading, or it just doesn't make sense!

Re:Why are they paying retailers?

[Arthur Grumbine]

I haven't read the article yet, but either the summary is way off, misleading, or it just doesn't make sense!

I guess TFS could be considered misleading if you believed that it was claiming to completely explain Google's plan. Or maybe, TFS was just incomplete (as summaries tend to be). From TFA:

"Google Editions allows retail partners to sell their books, especially those who haven't invested in a digital platform," he said. "We expect the majority (of customers) will go to retail partners not to Google. We are a wholesaler, a book distributor."

Re:Why are they paying retailers?

[jhfry]

Why do they need retailers at all? If they are paying the publisher anyway... why not just sell direct and give a larger cut to the publisher. I guess what I want to know is, what role does the retailer play here? It would by like going to iTunes to buy a song, and have to choose which retailer is going to get credit for the sale. It's a download, not a TV, so Amazons retailer model doesn't make sense here, people will simply always buy from the cheapest source and that source will be the one who only takes $.01 above cost (from the publisher) hoping for volume. So essentially 45% will go to the publisher, and a great majority of the other 55% will go the publisher.... why the middle man.

Re:Why are they paying retailers?

[PaintyThePirate]

I was confused too. The summary is missing this key piece of information:

"Google Editions allows retail partners to sell their books, especially those who haven't invested in a digital platform," he said. "We expect the majority (of customers) will go to retail partners not to Google. We are a wholesaler, a book distributor."

Re:Why are they paying retailers?

[Chyeld]

Google isn't creating a bookstore, they are creating a backend for bookstores to use.

In otherwords they hope to have you walk into a Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, or whatever brick and motar stores are still out there in the era of Amazon.com, and/or visit these company's websites, and purchase a "Google Editions" version of the book as opposed to having their own dedicated webfront like Amazon does.

Man the above sentence is tourtured grammer, but I can't make it come out any better.

what does browser based mean?

[e**(i pi)-1]

obvious questions: if it is browser based, can one read the book without being online? Can one download the book temporarily or for good? Are records kept from where and how long a reader reads a book and what kind of books are read? Will this be tied to your online profile and get you reader specific ads?

Re:what does browser based mean?

[eldavojohn]

obvious questions: if it is browser based, can one read the book without being online? Can one download the book temporarily or for good? Are records kept from where and how long a reader reads a book and what kind of books are read? Will this be tied to your online profile and get you reader specific ads?

From the article:

The books bought from Google, and its partners, would be accessible on any gadget that has a Web browser, including smartphones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops. A book would be accessible offline after the first time it was accessed.

There's an awful lot of questions and assumptions being asked about this device that are answered quite clearly in the article. I don't think anything about 'reader ads' are ads while reading was included in this. You'd be paying money for these books (just like with Amazon's Kindle), no ad supported revenue.

Re:what does browser based mean?

[Shagg]

Usually, it means the eBook store is browser based. You go online, buy, and download the eBook via your browser. After that you can open and read the file on any device that supports the format (generally with DRM). They probably know what books you've bought from them since it's tied to your account, but I don't think they're going to be monitoring where or how long you read a particular eBook for. I don't see how they could, since they don't control the devices.

The price matters

[dtzitz]

What they charge per book matters. I am not sure how many people you are going to get to buy an e-book for the same price that they could pick up a physical copy at their local book store or less if they bought it used on amazon. I am going to hold judgment until I see some prices.

Re:The device is all that matters

[Abreu]

I have been reading novels in a PalmOS device for years, it's no biggie

In fact, having seen a current generation epaper device, I can say that, for me, a standard color LCD is still the superior reading device

DRM sux

[OrangeTide]

At least upgrade to Mosaic. I'm just disappointed that Google isn't available on Gopher, and I can read ebooks just fine as plain text, this is how we've been doing it for many many years and the format Project Gutenberg started out using. Some people even host their blogs on gopher.

Re:amazon vs. Google

[cryfreedomlove]

Amazon just makes its shareholders rich.

What's wrong with that?

Re:amazon vs. Google

[Brainix]

Amazon has done some interesting research and development lately. In particular, look at Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform, as well as Amazon's statistically improbable phrases (SIP) algorithm. I have a fetish for natural language parsing, so SIP is particularly interesting to me. These are innovations.

Re:amazon vs. Google

[Shakrai]

What's wrong with that?

Hippie: Because it's the corporations man. The corporations are raping and destroying the world. *takes a hit* We should get rid of all the corporations and like live together somewhere and like help each other. We can have one guy who makes bread and another guy who looks after people's safety.
Stan: You mean like a baker and a cop?
Hippie: You kids just don't understand because you haven't been to college yet.

Re:amazon vs. Google

[Shakrai]

Amazon just makes its shareholders rich.

Did I miss the headline where Google bought back all outstanding shares and converted itself into a non-profit corporation?

Re:From TFA:

[JustNiz]

Yeah I read that too, but am still concerned why would you have to access it the first time via a browser? This might indicate that you're not really able to download a full copy as a single (non-DRM'd) file that you could put on another (browserless) e-book reader. Rather that you have to rely on some Google-supplied plugin to read an encrypted mess from your browser cache.

Out of print.

[JustNiz]

I like the fact that Google are focussing on out-of-print books.
It boggles my mind why Google scanning out-of-print books is kicking up a shit storm with book publishers though. I mean if the books are so marketable why are they out-of-print in the first place?
Also, where else would I go to get an out-of-print book? perhaps a used book store but the publishers dont get a cut of that either but don't seem to mind those. At least with Google selling on their behalf they could arrange some kickback.

Re:Out of print.

[JustinOpinion]

It boggles my mind why Google scanning out-of-print books is kicking up a shit storm with book publishers though. I mean if the books are so marketable why are they out-of-print in the first place?

Well the publisher's positions are not necessarily totally irrational. They are worried that if people have easy access to all these out-of-print books, they will purchase fewer new titles. Even though there isn't enough profit to be made by publishing many of these individual titles, the aggregate of all out-of-print books may capture enough "mindshare" to cut into the interest in books that are in print.

Now, I don't think this is a great argument. It basically relies on copyright and old-style inefficiencies to prop-up modern sales. It also makes many assumptions about people's purchasing behaviors. Frankly I'd rather copyright terms just be shorter, so that what Google is doing is unambiguously acceptable. But the publishers are "simply" trying to protect their profits. (The irrational part is that this isn't the best way to make money. Embracing new technologies and being consumer-friendly is, I believe, a more effective strategy.)

O'Reilly's eBook Site

[Bigbutt]

I actually like O'Reilly's Safari site for my eBooks. It's accessible to my iPhone as well as my various systems. As a consultant, it works better than dragging books around and the books are available for download. It's also very readable as each chapter is a single "page" vs many reference books I have are multi-column.

Having a similar Google site where the books are available whereever I am assuming 'net access plus it's off-line so I can read it when I'm out of range sounds a lot better than the Kindle at least for my purposes.

[John]

Re:The device is all that matters

[WaywardGeek]

It turns out that starting probably next year some time, you get the best of both worlds. We'll have netbooks and net tablets that pack displays equal to e-paper in sunlight, and with brilliant color.

Personally, I translate e-books to high-speed audio (about 500 wpm), rather than reading, as my central vision is failing. I can't tell you how much I enjoy having books read to me at that speed with the old IBM ViaVoice TTS. The problem with Kindle and friends is they make it too hard or impossible for me to enjoy their books in the form I want. I have high hopes that netbooks with the new displays coupled with Googles e-book service will change the world.

Printing will never catch on!

[argent]

But if you're an educated person of culture and refinement, you don't like reading on a computer screen. You enjoy the tactile sensation of turning pages and reading real books.

Bah, this newfangled "paper" stuff is pretty cheap and nasty looking when you compare it with real parchment. Educated people are willing to pay extra for professionally illuminated manuscripts.

Kindle app for iPhone/iPod

[theurge14]

The summary mentioned Google will be going up against Kindle owners but didn't mention the Kindle app for iPhone.

As of August 31 2009 the Kindle app for the iPhone was the 4th most popular app in the App Store, with estimates of 3 million Kindle for iPhone users out there.

Google will be going against this as well as Stanza and the B&N ebook readers. Apparently there's a rather large market for ebooks on the iPhone/iPod touch.