Google's e-book store to open this summer

Google's e-book store, Google Editions, is due to open for business this summer. It'll be stocked with thousands of e-books in a format compatible with all connected devices from the Amazon Kindle to Apple's iPad.

Although still embroiled in several US lawsuits for having scanned and made available a whole range books online without the prior agreement of their copyright holders, Google now looks set to become the next big fish in what is currently a very small pond of e-book retailers. Typically, Google isn't doing things by halves, as when it opens, the Google bookstore will be stocked with 400,000 to 600,000 e-books, compared with the Amazon Kindle Store's current 400,000 titles. Google's e-books will also be marketed in a DRM-free format, allowing users to read their purchases on any computer, smartphone, tablet or e-book reader. Plus, Google's retail system should see 45% of sales revenue go directly to publishers, who are free to set the prices of their own publications (again, unlike Amazon). In other words, it looks like a win-win set-up that could blow the competition out of the water. What's more, the book as we know it will be moving even further away from its original form, as Google's e-books will be browser-based rather than downloadable files.

Getting publishers on board

Lack of interoperability often ties e-book content to just one device and this has almost certainly hindered market growth. Apple's iBooks e-bookstore is accessible via the iPad, for example, with reports of 1.5 million downloads in the USA since the tablet's launch, and content from Amazon's Kindle Store is sold in a special format that can only be viewed on the Kindle device. Unlike its rivals, Google is once again pushing back the boundaries of content accessibility, which may in turn help boost the success of the e-book both by increasing customer appeal and by opening up new distribution channels. In fact, to help win over publishers, some of whom had been a tad put out by the mass book scanning project Google embarked on last year, the firm will even be allowing publishing companies to sell works on their own websites.

Google's more open approach to e-books should help stimulate the sector, as although reading devices are available and affordable, content hasn't quite caught up yet, especially in terms of new releases. So far, around 30,000 publishers have signed up to the project, which is great news for consumers, but it's also great news for Google Editions, which is shaping up as a heavyweight competitor for the Apple iBook store. All that's missing is some kind of Google tablet running on Android ...



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