Google Editions Soon

OK, I’ve been talking about this for 6 months now, but it’s going real soon:

Just in time for Christmas!

Google Editions To Launch This Year

What is rumoured so far:

+ Google has spent the last few years signing up about 40,000 pubisers internationally at places like the Frankfurt and London Book Fairs.

+ Google will launch with the books from 10-15,000 publishers

+ There may be integration with Google Books and/or Google Scholar as well as Google Search.

+ The format is a browser based format for books that can be read in any broswer (maybe some variant of XML/HTML5)

+ e-Readers would include PC or Mac based browsers or browsers on smartphones or e-readers like an iPad.

+ An app will not be required but that doesn’t preclude the development of iOS or Android based apps.

+ Books may be priced on an algorithm whereby the price could be set at 80% of the best retail price on the web.

+ At this point there is no word on institutional licensing for organizations like libraries, schools, and academe.

Hmmmmm…. I wonder if Google buys Groupon this week if they can launch with a coupon for a free book . . .

Watch what happens and consider what this could mean to libraries. We don’t know anything more than that this will be pretty transformational to the reading environment – even moreso than Amazon was to retail bookstores.

Stephen