We told you that digital book sales are expected to touch almost a billion US dollars as per Forrester Research. Experts further predict the sale of e-book reading devices to reach 15 million this year! Well, it seems the blossoming e-book market has attracted the prizefighter, Google into its fold and the rules of the game might just change for all we know. We say this because Google Editions (Google’s own ebook store) which is expected to launch in United States by this year-end and internationally in January 2011 is understood to offer a ‘read anywhere’ model whereby users can create their own virtual library with books from Google as well as other e-book sellers connected through a single Google online account. This on-line library can be accessed on varied web-enabled devices with a browser including laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones.
Currently, Amazon Kindle has the lion’s share (2/3rd) of e-book market and Amazon Kindle users can download books from Amazon website only though they can be read on any device running the Amazon Kindle reader application. Similarly Apple’s e-books application iBooks has users read books on any device running iOS 4 (iPhone and iPod touch) from it’s iBookstore.
Google has signed deals with myriad publishers to make available thousands of titles, some of which will be free while the others paid and the revenue-split for publishers is reported to be at 52% – much less than that in place for Amazon and Apple publishers. Wall Street Journal reports that those looking to download e-books will have to pay 80% of the print edition’s lowest price.
Google’s plan to scan more than 150 million books for online availability may be a boon for the lagging publisher still to get a hang of the digital world while for the book lovers at large, this might well be the Christmas gift they’ll cherish for years.