Google Editions, Bookstore in the Cloud, Will Go Live By July
Another disruptive threat to publishing?
Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 05/06/2010
- Panel held at Random House
- Access anywhere is the model
- Amazon, Apple sturdy competitors
- No library model as of yet
Google Editions was announced at a conference in Frankfurt in October 2009; Google officials now have a firmer grip on their plans.
Chris Palma, Google's manager for strategic-partner development, spoke at the panel, titled "The Book on Google: Is the Future of Publishing in the Cloud?" presented by Publishers Weekly and sponsored by the Book Industry Study Group. It was held at the offices of publisher Random House. (Here's coverage in PW.)
Google Editions is separate from the database intended to be created from millions of out-of-print books scanned from libraries, which certainly would be marketed to libraries, assuming the settlement, pending before a federal judge, is approved. With a sibling project, it’s not unlikely that Google will ultimately seek a library market, though Google Editions will be marketed via individual Google accounts.
Cloud computing and new opportunities
Palma described web-based cloud computing as a third major step in computing, after the mainframe/PC and the web. “Our market, and potential market, is not the people who've bought Kindles or iPads,” Palma said, but rather the 1.8 billion people who access the Internet around the world.
Of the billion-plus searches every day on Google, about 20 percent of the queries haven't been seen in the previous 90 days, and a small fraction of the queries are completely new. “That's an enormous long tail for search, and potentially an enormous long tale for content, and content sales,” he said.
While Google almost launched Google Editions three times in the last four or five years, he reflected, it would have been limited, with books “in a silo,” with access limited to a browser. “We saw the proliferation of devices and saw the opportunity much greater than a Google vertical,” Palma said.
Contrasting Google Editions to Amazon.com’s Kindle, he said the “vision is to be read anywhere and purchased anywhere.” The browser may become the most popular e-reading software; HTML5, still under development, is expected to provide browsers with the capacity to have readers built-in, rather than requiring plug ins.
“Our vision for ebooks is precisely the same [as for Google],” he said, “not only to discover and enable Google Editions on the site, but [to enable] purchase in a cobranded environment from any number of retail partners.”
Those searching Google see book results from Google’s 32,000 partners; 20 percent of the book is searchable. Links lead users to booksellers and the book’s publisher.
Low-tech DRM
Palma said the requirement of a Google account serves as a low-tech form of digital rights management, or DRM: “I'm quite unlikely to share my Google account with friends because my whole online life is there.”
Still, along with access anywhere, the cloud can allow readers to share books with others, thus facilitating book clubs, margin notes, and other social features. Synced to the cloud, “Google knows what page you left off on,” he added.
Meanwhile, books will be cached in browsers, allowing for secure offline access. “A superhacker could try to reassemble these pages and output them to some kind of rendering software,” he said, but the unique fingerprint means “all you've succeeded is cracking that one book.”
Schnittman on the new world order
Evan Schnittman, VP of global business development for Oxford University Press, delineated the balance of power among Amazon, Apple, and Google, citing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats involved.
Amazon’s greatest strength is retail and its “demonstrated commitment to making ebooks work” he said, but over time its lack of experience as a hardware producer, coupled with competition from new devices like the iPad, will be a weakness.
He suggested the Kindle will remain “the dominant platform for immersive reading and buying ebooks” as well as a core strength in the self-publishing marketplace. As for threats, already Amazon has tussled with publishers, which are likely to see Amazon more as a competitor. And unlike Apple and Google, Amazon’s margins are very thin.
Apple, he said, does terrific hardware and software design, dominating the entertainment device market. It remains new to the book market, with a limited collection to start; the iPad, he suggested, would be less conducive to immersive reading than e-ink, and the lack of a cloud is also a weakness.
Beyond entertainment, he said, the iPad will provide a new market for textbooks, and also may help Apple reach an international audience. (Here’s his blog post on the iPad as a “gateway drug to digital learning.”) As for threats, he suggested that Apple may find it difficult to get publishing contracts and publishers to deal with disaggregation, such as buying single chapters. The additional cost of 3G is also a factor, as is the iPad’s weight.
Google’s strengths, Schnittman said, include its dominance in search, content in the cloud, number of titles, and goal to achieve dominance in search and advertising, not margin for content sales. Among the weaknesses he tallied: the unresolved settlement over scanning; an unproven browser interface; and questions of whether Google or its partners control pricing.
Opportunities include bundling print and digital editions, greater retail partnerships, and inroads into the education/professional/corporate markets. Threats include pricing control, rights controls on content within books, and HTML5 security issues
Time for disruption
Veteran literary agent and e-publisher (of E-Reads) Richard Curtis warned that the advent of digital books will continue to disrupt the publishing and bookstore industries. “You can go to a kiosk at your beauty parlor and download a book,” he said. “There's going to be that kind of disorder in libraries and wherever the traditional book model is held.”
“That being said, I believe you'll also see a reaction to the current hysteria as people realize not just the pleasures of reading on paper but the necessity of having to read on paper,” he said, suggesting that “the most immersive reading experience comes from paper.”
Retail issues and bundling
Can Google become a retailer? Schnittman was confident. “The notion is search, find, buy; the buy is simply a function,” he said. “Whether or not Google is going to be good at being a retailer is irrelevant.”
Curtis said many people want to have all editions of a book when they buy that book, so it’s important to consider a model in which that’s possible.
He acknowledged that no one has resolved pricing. He recounted providing the example of a reader paying $25 for a hardcover; how much should the ebook then cost? The answers ranged from full price to free.
Will Google facilitate bundling, asked the moderator, PW Features Editor Andrew Albanese (ex-LJ) asked.
“We're not getting into the physical book sales business,” Palma said. “We're working with retail partners to facilitate that bundling.”
The library market
Noting that Palma had discussed a one-book, one user model, LJ asked if Google would sell to the library market or partnering with library vendors.
“We probably would not partner,” he responded. “We've talked quite a bit about the idea of building collections and making them available in the institutional space.” He noted that a key part of the Google Books settlement involves building databases.
“I think we're a couple of years away , anyway, from that,” he said. “We thought it would make more sense to go to B [business] to C [consumer] to start, it's more our natural DNA.”
Independent ebook rights?
Right now, Curtis observed, there is no independent marketplace for ebook rights; they’re expected to be part of the deal “I do see there's a temptation for agents to skip the publishing process entirely and selling books directly to Kindle, retaining print rights, and having it printed by a small press.”
“Are you looking at ebooks as additive income, or is the value, really, as whole?” Schnittman comment. “Ebooks are going to take away print sales.”
New tools?
The best thing about an ebook, Albanese suggested, are functions like keyword search. Will there be new tools?
“A very simple value-add is the ability to search across one zoned library, using your own library as a reference library,” Palma responded. “The other huge value-add is the ability to create a social network around a particular book... I'm taking notes and maybe posing questions to folks in my reading group. I can tell Google who I want to see those notes.”
Schnittman called that “a crock.” The most important thing about ebooks is convenience: “You buy it instantly; you read it instantly.”
What about POD?
Would print-on-demand (POD) be part of bundling? “More and more of our strategy relies on an on-demand view,” Schnittman said, noting that OUP’s academic titles may sell only 250 copies.
Curtis observed, “As long as returnability exists, you're going to have a greater and greater attraction to a POD model.”
What happens to warehouses?
If the future of book industry is in the cloud, will publishers close their warehouses?
Schnittman responded, “Any part of the industry that starts seeing 20-plus percent coming from a digital channel will start looking at ways to manage those costs.... Warehouses might close, but others will supersize.” But he didn’t think all warehouses would disappear, since that’s the point “where print no longer makes sense.”
The end of publishing?
Curtis warned of a scenario in which Amazon’s Jeff Bezos told a publisher like Random House to send his company the file of a book: “All you have to do is acquire, manage the editorial transaction, pay the agent, and we'll take care of everything else.”
“It's a genuine possibility if you are an efficiency expert,” he said, warning that “it means all the wonderful culture we live in will disappear.” Palma pooh-poohed the idea of working with just one channel, suggesting that publishers do marketing “uniquely well.”
