Google plans to launch an online electronic book store, available to any device with a Web browser, threatening to upset a burgeoning market for dedicated e-readers dominated by Amazon’s Kindle. At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Google said it doesn’t plan to offer a dedicated e-book reader to accompany the new service.
The Web search giant said today it would launch Google Editions in the first half of next year, initially offering about half a million e-books in partnership with publishers with whom it already cooperates, where they have digital rights.
Readers will be able to buy e-books either from Google directly or from other online stores such as Amazon.com or Barnesandnoble.com. Google will host the e-books and make them searchable.
“We’re not focused on a dedicated e-reader or device of any kind,” Tom Turvey, Google’s director of strategic partnerships, told journalists at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Google Editions has three business models: 1) allow the consumer to buy the e-book via Google Books; 2) buy it from a partner retailer; or 3) from a publisher’s own website.
Payment may be split 63/37 in the publisher’s favour through the first route, while if the book is bought from a retailer, the publisher will take 45%, with the remaining 55% split between retailer and Google. Amanda Edmonds, Google’s director of strategic partnerships, said the programme would be rolled out by June and that discussions were “just beginning” as to what split that would be. Edmonds added no split had been decided on for books bought via a publisher’s site.
Edmonds said it was “definitely” Google’s intention to partner with device manufacturers, but declined to give names. She added she “doubted” Kindle would be on board.
Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest chain of bookstores, announced this summer it will provide free Wi-Fi in all 777 of its stores throughout the United States.
Barnes & Noble signed a strategic agreement with AT&T to provide free Wi-Fi to all its customers. No AT&T subscription required. The company hopes to bring more customers into the store, and expand its current e-book catalog of 700,000 titles — 500,000 of which are free public domain e-books from Google — over the coming months.
TechCrunch has an e-book reader cheat sheet, comparing the Kindle (6″ screen, now $249), Kindle DX (9.7″ screen, $489), Sony Reader Daily Edition (7″ screen, $399), and the Irex DR800SG (8.1″ screen, $399).
Through Sony’s eBook Store, users can also access more than one million free public domain books from Google. These titles, which Google has digitized as part of its Google Books project, are available in EPUB format and are optimized for current models of the Sony Reader.
Sony also plans to lower the prices of best-selling e-books to $9.99 from $11.99, matching Amazon’s prices for Kindle ebooks. Bookseller Barnes & Noble has lowered the cost for books on eReader.com to match that of Amazon’s. Barnes & Noble acquired the online e-book store earlier in the year through the acquisition of Fictionwise.
The new Sony e-readers will use the same E-Ink screen technology that’s in the Kindle and older Sony Reader. Both devices will have enough internal memory to store about 350 books, and a battery life of about two weeks. Sony’s eBook Library software 3.0 now includes support for many Apple Macintosh computers as well as PCs, makes it easy to transfer and read any Adobe PDF (with reflow capability), Microsoft Word, BBeB files, or other text file formats on the Reader.
Plastic Logic is selling a device similar to the Kindle DX and is expected to launch a smaller version in the next few days. In July Barnes & Noble said it will be the exclusive provider of digital books for Plastic Logic. That device can use a wireless connection from AT&T. Both the Plastic Logic Reader and the iRex Reader, unlike the Kindle, can access Wi-Fi hot spots.
Related Dailywireless articles include; E-Book Clash of Giants: Amazon Vs Google, Amazon Cuts Kindle Price, Offers Internation Edition, IREX: World E-Book?, New Sony E-Readers, E-Books from Sony, Asustek & MSI, Barnes & Noble Launches eBookstore, Kindle DX: $489, Shootout: Google Vrs Kindle, Sony Reader: 500,000 Free Books, Kindle’s Text to Speech Under Fire, Kindle 2: Slimmer, Smarter, Universal Access to All Human Knowledge – at 100Mbps – Free and The Death Of Paid Wi-Fi.
