On Monday, the
technology giant unveiled its long-expected “Google eBooks” platform,
an e-book store that contains 3 million volumes, most of which are free
public domain works.
But hundreds of thousands of Google’s e-books will
be paid titles from major and minor publishers. Those will include many
bestsellers and, Google says, the vast majority of books already
commercially available in electronic form.
By opening its eBookStore, Google is pitting itself
squarely against established digital booksellers, including the market
leader
The books can be read online through a new Google
reading interface that also launched Monday. They’ll also work on a
number of tablet and e-reader devices, including Apple’s iPad and
iPhone, Android-based smart phones and tablets, and e-ink devices from
Amazon Kindle users will not be able to purchase new
books from Google, though the Kindle will be able to display some of
Google’s public domain (non-copyrighted) books.
Google will sell the books via two main online
channels. The first is its eBookStore, where it will sell directly to
consumers and share the proceeds with publishers. The second is by way
of online bookstores, which will add a Google e-book sales widget to
their websites and split the retail proceeds with Google.
Books sold by most of the large U.S. publishers — Penguin, HarperCollins,
— fall under the so-called “agency model,” in which the publisher sets
the list price, takes roughly 70 percent of the sales revenue, and the
retailer — in this case, Google — takes the remaining 30 percent.
For non-agency books, Google will use an algorithm
to choose a price based on market data, not including competitors’
prices, Google says. Google then keeps the proceeds from that sale,
minus approximately 52 percent of the publisher’s original list price.
Google representatives said the proportion of the
revenue split can vary somewhat depending on the specifics of deals
with individual publishers.
Google has also done deals with hundreds of
independent bookstores such that, if customers buy Google e-books
through stores’ websites, the stores split the proceeds with Google,
after the publisher’s cut. Google said it made deals individually with
each store, and has not disclosed the proportion of the revenue sharing.
Copy protection has been a concern among publishers
of e-books, who worry that the digital book files can be copied and
widely circulated online. Google will use a variety of copy-protection
mechanisms, including a patented copy protection scheme for books
displayed on the web, encrypted files for iPhone and Android devices,
and
Google’s system will automatically keep track of a
reader’s stopping point, even if the reader switches from one device to
another. That mechanism, however, will not initially work for e-ink
devices. Nor will Google’s Web interface allow for highlighting or
note-taking.
Google has scanned 15 million books as part of the
large-scale book digitization project it started in 2004. Many of those
books, however, are still under copyright and subject to a lawsuit
awaiting resolution in a New York federal court. Until that lawsuit is
settled, most of those books will remain out of the Google bookstore.
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