You’ll be able to tell your children’s children that you remember the day Google launched Google eBooks and changed the landscape of publishing.
Well, there may be a little hyperbole in that sentence, but today Google put more than 3 million e-books in reach of anyone in the U.S. Soon, I’m sure, availability within the rest of the world will follow.
Besides Google’s huge reach, Google e-books will be popular because:
- Nearly every e-reader (not Kindle—yet), iPad-like tablet, and smart phone will work with Google e-Books. As will laptops and PCs
- Books are stored online, so there is no limit, storage-wise, to the number you can have in your library.
- Current best-sellers are available.
- So are hundreds of thousands of other books including the classics.
- Self-published books will be available.
- Many out-of-copyright titles are free.
- Since the book normally remains in the cloud, when you switch devices, say from your laptop to your iPhone, you can just continue reading at the place you left off.
- You can download an e-pub or PDF version to read offline.
- You can buy books directly from Google or from one of a number of independent booksellers.
Here’s a video of how it works.
Two reasons e-books are important to authors and publishers:
One of the biggest challenges every publisher has is distribution. Soon an author’s work can easily be made available from Jersey to Jakarta.
Instant gratification will drive sales. Say you are on the beach in Bali and the fellow on the blanket next to you tells you of a terrific thriller he’s reading. Within minutes, if that long, you can be reading your own copy.
There are a lot of good things about the digital delivery of books, but some rough spots remain to be worked out. Not the least of which has to do with how the sale price of an e-book will be split between the retailer (Google in this case), the publisher, and the author. This will, of course, be worked out to the satisfaction of all since, like water, economics finds its own level.
Just a write thought.