Slog
News & ArtsTuesday, May 4, 2010
Books Google to Start Selling E-books This Summer
Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, May 4, 2010 at 11:14 AM
Like the headline says, Google will officially launch its own e-book store, Google Editions, in June or July. But there's a pretty big catch, according to CNET:
One key difference between Google's approach to digital book sales and the approaches used by Amazon and Apple is that Google customers will not be able to download books sold through the store: they'll be accessible exclusively through a Web browser. That has some advantages for Google, in that it side-steps messy DRM (digital rights management) questions and allows it to offer the service for any device, rather than having to negotiate deals.
This is a weird approach. Part of the whole tablet/e-book explosion of the last year has been about making sure that books are available to their purchasers around the clock, and that the devices have the battery power to sustain long periods of reading. Internet access consumes a lot of power in mobile devices, and it's still not available everywhere. Will people be willing to buy online-only e-books? And how much will they be willing to pay for them?
UPDATE: I just found an Engadget post from last year that says "The books will be available to any device with a web browser, but will be available offline after they've been accessed the first time," which sounds more reasonable. Google is also going to allow bookstores to sell Google Editions through their websites and keep the "bulk of the revenue," providing Google with hundreds of storefronts through which they can sell their books.
3
I think they're trying to push the envelope here. This is the future they want; whether its the future that'll work or not remains to be seen. I think they're a little premature, though. But they have so goddamn much money they can afford to fail a few times for every one they get right.
4
Keeping the book in the cloud actually makes a lot of sense for certain things. First of all you won't need to be constantly connected to the internet. They can send 10 pages or 100 pages at a time, and then turn the connection off. The bigger thing though will be searching. You can do all of your searching on the server side and leverage all that power that Google has to make it super fast.
5
Also, keep in mind this fact about Google books:
http://bit.ly/9PM2LE
Basically Google can sell any book published before 2009 without negotiating seperate contracts with publishers.
http://bit.ly/9PM2LE
Basically Google can sell any book published before 2009 without negotiating seperate contracts with publishers.
6
All the easier to change books post-publication and post-purchase w/o necessarily the consent of the purchaser or author. Yay!
7
@4: I do agree that cloud books are a workable idea.
It remains to be seen exactly what all this is going to look like, but I think having a consistent internet connection is asking a bit much at this point. I assume that they do have a way around that. Google may be shaky on privacy, but they're not stupid.
And, yeah, being able to search my books is something I have wanted ever since I first went to Google.
It remains to be seen exactly what all this is going to look like, but I think having a consistent internet connection is asking a bit much at this point. I assume that they do have a way around that. Google may be shaky on privacy, but they're not stupid.
And, yeah, being able to search my books is something I have wanted ever since I first went to Google.
8
They'd have to be pretty darn cheap e-books to compensate for bright screen, poor battery life and all the other flaws. And given the current publisher freak-out about 10 dollar pricing, I definitely don't see them being nearly cheap enough.
9
"First of all you won't need to be constantly connected to the internet. They can send 10 pages or 100 pages at a time, and then turn the connection off."
Books are tiny little files, compared to so much else we take for granted these days. While they may well keep everything server-side, it won't be as a space saving measure on the end-user.
Books are tiny little files, compared to so much else we take for granted these days. While they may well keep everything server-side, it won't be as a space saving measure on the end-user.
10
Oh, I hadn't even thought of searching. I guess my experience searching on the Kindle put me off the subject -- it's worse than root canal -- painful and useless. But Google does search brilliantly. Now, if they can figure out how to keep search out of a separate window (like a Firefox page search) so you can flip through the hits really fast, and IN CONTEXT they'll really have something.
11
@Paul Constant #7
I don't really think the internet connection is going to be an issue. Google is not mandating what devices use this service. You laptop and phone pretty much have a persistent internet connection already. I can also imagine someone making a hardware reader that piggy backs on a 3G network in the same way that the Kindle does. It only takes a few seconds to download an entire book over 3G and then you simply turn the connection off. You want a new book or to do a search, the connection pops back on. That's not going to be a huge drain on the battery.
I don't really think the internet connection is going to be an issue. Google is not mandating what devices use this service. You laptop and phone pretty much have a persistent internet connection already. I can also imagine someone making a hardware reader that piggy backs on a 3G network in the same way that the Kindle does. It only takes a few seconds to download an entire book over 3G and then you simply turn the connection off. You want a new book or to do a search, the connection pops back on. That's not going to be a huge drain on the battery.
Advertisement
Most Commented on Slog
-
Hating People Doesn't Make Them Thinner by Jen Graves
-
Los Angeles Gay Bar Bans Bachelorette Parties Until Marriage Equality Is Attained by David Schmader
-
Fill in the Blank by Grant Brissey
-
This Reminds Me of the Great Calculator Scare of the Late '70s/Early '80s by David Schmader
-
Idiot Tries to Defend Bigoted Anti-Gay-Marriage Preacher on Anderson Cooper by Paul Constant
-
Six Moms with Too Much Time on Their Hands and a Shitty Website Decide to Fight Gay Superheroes by Paul Constant
-
Why Mayor McGinn's Wife Canceled Her Family's Seattle Times Subscription by Eli Sanders
-
What the Hell Is Wrong With Seattle's Pride Parade? by Dominic Holden
-
The Saturday Morning News by Unpaid Intern
-
NYC Man Ticketed for Not Riding in the Bike Lane by Jonathan Golob
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Comments (12) RSS