Preparing to sell e-books, Google takes on Amazon

Google plans to help publishers sell digital versions of new books direct to consumers, for use on phones or e-book readers.
The New York Times

The story "Preparing to sell e-books, Google takes on Amazon" published May 31, 2009 at 10:30 PM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[TogetherinParis]

I'm both an author and publisher of one book: HIllary's Angel by Ross Nicholson. The only way to read it is via google, then booksearch. I tried selling it as a file on Amazon, but the Amazon booksearch of my book's exact title brought up hostile Hillary hate trash pages ahead of my book. Amazon was helpless to change anything. Naturally, I cancelled my Amazon association instantly. I'm glad that Google is going to sell book file access to readers and I look forward to doing business with a more reputable company when they get it up and running. Go Google Guys Go!

[johntm1]

I applaud Amazon for it's aggressive stand on pricing. For publishers to insist on the same prices for
e books that it charges for hard copies doesn't make sense. E books have to be cheaper to publish and
they are certainly more friendly to the environment. And having an entire library on one little device is
great! I just wish that every book published had an e book edition.

[Jonathan]

Cheaper AND cheap. Two of the three books I've purchased from Amazon's Kindle book store obviously were OCRed and NOT proof read. I've getting things like HOT instead of NOT. FRANSLATE instead of TRANSLATE. CPEN instead of OPEN, etc. IMHO if they aren't going to take the time to even proofread the damn book we should be getting it for free.

[Jonathan]

I picked up a Kindle, 3 weeks ago. The only way for Google to take on Amazon is to have a good e-book reader, because the average reader does not want to sit on his/her computer to read a book and a phone's screen is too pathetically small to really be a huge hit. In short Google has no hardware and it will fail.
Now that said, while the Kindle is nice its overpriced. Everyone I've show the thing to loves the device. They love the screen, the love the battery life I quote, they love the ease of use. However $360 is too damn much. If it was $299 it would be a huge seller. IMHO Amazon needs to have a model that does not have Whispernet. A feature I'm 100% certain is at least $100 of price of the device. Most people couldn't care less about connecting it to their computer to move books over if it saved them $100+.

What it boils down to is both have great potential but the lack of hardware on Google's side and the lack of a good price on Amazon's side makes it a draw, more towards Amazon's side though because of the price of books.
As for the publishing ind. Please please please try being *****. You will wind up worse then what happened to the RIAA, because books don't require bittorrent. @ around 1MB in size, in most cases they can be FTPed or e-mailed between friends. The question is will an industry learn or will they shoot themselves in the foot like the RIAA? My guess is they are chambering a round right now.

[datum226]

Google does not need to create a device, there are many great e-book readers out there. For example Sony e-book reader. They cost much less than kindle, and the quality as good or even better.
I think they are idiots to sell e-book at $10+. Make it $1.99 and people will be flocking to you. If people are smart enough to run a publishing company, I am sure they are smart enough to understand that customers will simply pirate their books. Offer me a book I want for $1.99 and I will not look for alternatives, but when you charge $10+, I will put some effort into it and find it somewhere else.

[istill316]

@datum226

$1.99 is absurdly cheap for books, especially how many copies are typically sold per book, far less than audio tracks. The authors and publishing companies would be best served by keeping prices up. or not going digital at all. Paper books should never drop out of fashion, especially by means of ultra-low e-book prices. Books are one of the few piracy-resistant media, and digitizing will ruin that.

[datum226]

2 istill316,
$1.99 maybe cheap. But it does not cost much to take a book and scan pages. They have to understand that people are doing it anyway. No one stops them from making real books, but if you digitize it, make it cheap.
I guarantee that they will make more money by selling e-books for 1.99 than for 10. As I mentioned earlier, it takes some effort to find a pirated book, and for 10 people will take that extra step, but you make it 1.99, and it will be easier to download a legit copy.

[Jonathan]

Google needs DRM. There is simply NO way in hell the majority of the industry will go anywhere near a none DRM book. And Sony's ebook reader isn't open enough to allow others to use their DRM design.