Brad Stone, New York Times; Stores See Google as Ally in E-Book Market:
"Independent bookstores were battered first by discount chains like Barnes & Noble, then by superefficient Web retailers like Amazon.com.
Darin Sennett of Powell’s said a Google deal would make the store independent of the e-readers sold by the big booksellers.
Now the electronic book age is dawning. With this latest challenge, these stores will soon have a new ally: the search giant Google.
Later this summer, Google plans to introduce its long-awaited push into electronic books, called Google Editions. The company has revealed little about the venture thus far, describing it generally as an effort to sell digital books that will be readable within a Web browser and accessible from any Internet-connected computing device.
Now one element of Google Editions is coming into sharper focus. Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.
The partnership could help beloved bookstores like Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore.; Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif.; and St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York. To court the growing audience of people who prefer reading on screens rather than paper, these small stores have until now been forced to compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Sony.
The Google deal could give them a foothold in this fast-growing market and help them keep devoted customers from migrating elsewhere.
“Google has shown a real interest in our market,” said Len Vlahos, chief operating officer of the booksellers association, which has over 1,400 member bookstores. “For a lot of reasons, it’s a very good fit.”
Google will probably face an uphill battle in its effort to enter the already crowded e-books field. The company has little experience as a retailer. It also has far fewer consumer credit card numbers in its database than either Amazon or Apple, and its online payment system, Google Checkout, has not been widely adopted."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/business/30books.html?hpw
Showing posts with label Google Editions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google Editions. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight; New York Times, 2/8/10
Motoko Rich, New York Times; Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight:
"Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s class-action settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes — mostly out of print — from several university libraries. That settlement was recently imperiled by a filing from the Department of Justice that said it still had significant legal problems with the agreement, even after a round of revisions. The settlement is subject to court approval.
Google users can already search up to about 20 percent of the content of many new books that publishers have agreed to enroll in a search program. According to publishers, Google originally said it would automatically enroll any book sold through Google Editions in the search program. An executive from at least one of the six largest publishers said the company did not agree with those terms. Mr. Clancy said that Google would not require books sold through Google Editions to be part of the search program.
Last May Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, told publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York that Google’s program for selling new e-book editions would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle.
Google, without its own e-reader, wants to be a Switzerland of sorts, competing with Barnes & Noble and other e-book sellers to become the preferred digital bookstore on devices other than the iPad or the Kindle, such as Android smart phones.
In general, publishers are eager for Google to enter the e-book market because they want more competition. “We would love to have a diverse marketplace for e-books,” said Maja Thomas, senior vice president for the digital division of Hachette Book Group, which publishes blockbuster authors like James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer. Since Google would contribute to such diversity, Ms. Thomas said, “we welcome them.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/books/09google.html?scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse
"Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s class-action settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes — mostly out of print — from several university libraries. That settlement was recently imperiled by a filing from the Department of Justice that said it still had significant legal problems with the agreement, even after a round of revisions. The settlement is subject to court approval.
Google users can already search up to about 20 percent of the content of many new books that publishers have agreed to enroll in a search program. According to publishers, Google originally said it would automatically enroll any book sold through Google Editions in the search program. An executive from at least one of the six largest publishers said the company did not agree with those terms. Mr. Clancy said that Google would not require books sold through Google Editions to be part of the search program.
Last May Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, told publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York that Google’s program for selling new e-book editions would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle.
Google, without its own e-reader, wants to be a Switzerland of sorts, competing with Barnes & Noble and other e-book sellers to become the preferred digital bookstore on devices other than the iPad or the Kindle, such as Android smart phones.
In general, publishers are eager for Google to enter the e-book market because they want more competition. “We would love to have a diverse marketplace for e-books,” said Maja Thomas, senior vice president for the digital division of Hachette Book Group, which publishes blockbuster authors like James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer. Since Google would contribute to such diversity, Ms. Thomas said, “we welcome them.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/books/09google.html?scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse
Sunday, December 20, 2009
More and more e-books being stored on the 'cloud'; San Jose Mercury News, 12/20/09
Mike Swift, San Jose Mercury News; More and more e-books being stored on the 'cloud':
"From his home office on a Los Gatos cul-de-sac, Mark Coker is part of a digital movement ruffling the pages of the publishing industry, helping to speed readers' transition from words in print to words on a screen.
The founder of Smashwords, an electronic book publishing platform for self-published authors and small publishers, Coker thinks the transition from print to electronic books, for many readers, is inevitable.
Less clear, he says, is where readers will store the e-books they buy. Will those virtual libraries live on a personal device, such as Amazon's Kindle? Or will people choose to store their e-books on the Internet "cloud," on networks accessible through any computer or smart-phone? And how portable will readers' digital libraries be? Will readers be able to share their e-books the way you pass a treasured paper book on to a good friend?
The publishing world is going through rapid change, which is clear this holiday season as large numbers of consumers embrace electronic books available for download to devices such as the Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Sony's Reader.
The change has been so tumultuous that several New York publishing houses have decided to delay releasing books in their electronic format for months, concerned that the availability of $9.99 e-books will slice into the sales of traditional hardcover editions that may sell for three times that price.
Already, many readers are using public libraries as a kind of e-book "cloud." The library e-book distributor OverDrive predicts downloads of e-books and other library content will hit 19 million in 2009 — roughly the volume for the years 2003-08 combined.
"We've really hit a tipping point," Coker says. "Once people try an e-book, it's a 'wow' experience."
Starting in 2010, however, anybody who wants to read an e-book will have to choose more than just which reader they buy. Increasingly, consumers will have an array of e-book access choices, such as buying perpetual access to a book stored on the Internet, downloading a book to a personal device or perhaps some other model...
By next holiday season, Google plans to offer an online retail service for e-books that will allow readers to buy access, in perpetuity, to any e-book stored on Google's network.
"Our vision is basically to provide a great consumer model for buying digital books, using the browser in a sort of device-agnostic way," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. "It could be on a Web-enabled laptop, a desktop or a phone, a tablet — any of those things. Our vision of it is to provide an open platform for reading and accessing books."
The retail service, to be called Google Editions, will be only for newly published books and is separate from the Internet giant's highly controversial plan to scan existing out-of-print books, splitting the proceeds with any rights-holders it can locate. Google won't say how much a newly published e-book will cost on Editions, but it has tried to steer speculation away from talk of the service being an "Amazon-killer" that uses Google's dominant search engine to siphon book-buying traffic from the e-retailer...
There are pros and cons to storing a book or a song online rather than on a device. If you lose your iPod or Kindle, the content is gone, too, although Amazon allows readers to access their entire library of previously purchased Kindle books at no charge if something happens to the device. There would be no limit to how many books or songs could be stored on the cloud.
On the other hand, if you are on a trek in the Yosemite high country and suddenly decide you want to reread the copy of "Freakonomics" you bought last month from Google Editions, you'll be out of luck, because you can't access the cloud without an Internet connection. That said, you could have cached the book on your smartphone before you set off into the woods.
A bigger issue for e-book readers may be the different proprietary formats that govern the Kindle, the Reader and the Nook. That would prevent a reader who wants to switch, say, from using Amazon's Kindle to Sony's Reader from transporting her e-books to the other device.
The Kindle's format also does not support downloads of e-books in the format used by many public libraries, although Amazon counters that thousands of public-domain books are available in the Kindle store, including many free classics. Customers can use sites such as Gutenberg.org, Google and Internet Archive to access other e-books.
Coker predicts that consumers won't be pleased when they realize the differing formats and copy-protection code called Digital Rights Management (DRM) is like a fence around their e-book collections, one that publishers say is necessary to protect them from e-book piracy.
"Over the long haul," Coker predicts, "customers are not going to want to have their library in the cloud fractured across 20 different retailers."
Smashwords does not wrap its text with DRM coding, and it allows readers to use both a device model or a cloud model to access their e-books. With more than 5,000 e-books for sale at smashwords.com, the company has deals that allows readers to download to the Kindle, the Reader or the Nook. But the company also allows customers to buy permanent access to any e-book stored on Smashwords' network, allowing them to read it at any time from any smartphone or computer with a Web browser.
"It's your book — that's our approach to it," Coker said."
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14021253?nclick_check=1
"From his home office on a Los Gatos cul-de-sac, Mark Coker is part of a digital movement ruffling the pages of the publishing industry, helping to speed readers' transition from words in print to words on a screen.
The founder of Smashwords, an electronic book publishing platform for self-published authors and small publishers, Coker thinks the transition from print to electronic books, for many readers, is inevitable.
Less clear, he says, is where readers will store the e-books they buy. Will those virtual libraries live on a personal device, such as Amazon's Kindle? Or will people choose to store their e-books on the Internet "cloud," on networks accessible through any computer or smart-phone? And how portable will readers' digital libraries be? Will readers be able to share their e-books the way you pass a treasured paper book on to a good friend?
The publishing world is going through rapid change, which is clear this holiday season as large numbers of consumers embrace electronic books available for download to devices such as the Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Sony's Reader.
The change has been so tumultuous that several New York publishing houses have decided to delay releasing books in their electronic format for months, concerned that the availability of $9.99 e-books will slice into the sales of traditional hardcover editions that may sell for three times that price.
Already, many readers are using public libraries as a kind of e-book "cloud." The library e-book distributor OverDrive predicts downloads of e-books and other library content will hit 19 million in 2009 — roughly the volume for the years 2003-08 combined.
"We've really hit a tipping point," Coker says. "Once people try an e-book, it's a 'wow' experience."
Starting in 2010, however, anybody who wants to read an e-book will have to choose more than just which reader they buy. Increasingly, consumers will have an array of e-book access choices, such as buying perpetual access to a book stored on the Internet, downloading a book to a personal device or perhaps some other model...
By next holiday season, Google plans to offer an online retail service for e-books that will allow readers to buy access, in perpetuity, to any e-book stored on Google's network.
"Our vision is basically to provide a great consumer model for buying digital books, using the browser in a sort of device-agnostic way," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. "It could be on a Web-enabled laptop, a desktop or a phone, a tablet — any of those things. Our vision of it is to provide an open platform for reading and accessing books."
The retail service, to be called Google Editions, will be only for newly published books and is separate from the Internet giant's highly controversial plan to scan existing out-of-print books, splitting the proceeds with any rights-holders it can locate. Google won't say how much a newly published e-book will cost on Editions, but it has tried to steer speculation away from talk of the service being an "Amazon-killer" that uses Google's dominant search engine to siphon book-buying traffic from the e-retailer...
There are pros and cons to storing a book or a song online rather than on a device. If you lose your iPod or Kindle, the content is gone, too, although Amazon allows readers to access their entire library of previously purchased Kindle books at no charge if something happens to the device. There would be no limit to how many books or songs could be stored on the cloud.
On the other hand, if you are on a trek in the Yosemite high country and suddenly decide you want to reread the copy of "Freakonomics" you bought last month from Google Editions, you'll be out of luck, because you can't access the cloud without an Internet connection. That said, you could have cached the book on your smartphone before you set off into the woods.
A bigger issue for e-book readers may be the different proprietary formats that govern the Kindle, the Reader and the Nook. That would prevent a reader who wants to switch, say, from using Amazon's Kindle to Sony's Reader from transporting her e-books to the other device.
The Kindle's format also does not support downloads of e-books in the format used by many public libraries, although Amazon counters that thousands of public-domain books are available in the Kindle store, including many free classics. Customers can use sites such as Gutenberg.org, Google and Internet Archive to access other e-books.
Coker predicts that consumers won't be pleased when they realize the differing formats and copy-protection code called Digital Rights Management (DRM) is like a fence around their e-book collections, one that publishers say is necessary to protect them from e-book piracy.
"Over the long haul," Coker predicts, "customers are not going to want to have their library in the cloud fractured across 20 different retailers."
Smashwords does not wrap its text with DRM coding, and it allows readers to use both a device model or a cloud model to access their e-books. With more than 5,000 e-books for sale at smashwords.com, the company has deals that allows readers to download to the Kindle, the Reader or the Nook. But the company also allows customers to buy permanent access to any e-book stored on Smashwords' network, allowing them to read it at any time from any smartphone or computer with a Web browser.
"It's your book — that's our approach to it," Coker said."
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14021253?nclick_check=1
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