Google to launch e-book sales service in July

(Vindianz May 5 2010): Google has confirmed its entry into the digital book market by announcing its online e-book store Google Editions due to be launched in July.

google-editions

The new service will not be accompanied by an e-reader such as the Amazon Kindle or the Apple iPad. Instead, users will be able to browse, search and buy digital copies for e-books using their own browser on any device that can be connected to the worldwide web. This move is expected to affect sales of e-reader devices and give tough competition to Amazon and Apple’s online stores. E-books can also be sold by third party retailers on their own websites as Google Editions operates as a B2B service as well.

Google has so far scanned and added 12 million books that are in-print and out-of-print to its database which is larger than that of Apple and Amazon. The company has however, not revealed its revenue-sharing agreement, if any, with book retailers. The current trend among major retailers is to set their own pricing to ensure high margins. While Apple follows this pattern by allowing publishers to do the pricing, Amazon had set its own prices and acquired 70 percent of the profit margin from every e-book for itself. It was forced to reduce this margin to 30 percent after the introduction of the Apple iPad in the market.

The e-book market is a growing market with revenue earned from wholesales in the US tripling in Q3 of 2009 from $13.9 million to $46.4 million. E-reader devices have also duplicated the rise in the e-book market with 2.4 million units of the Kindle being sold with a market share of 55 percent. Apple had also announced the sale of if 1 millionth unit earlier this week.

Further Reading

Stay updated! Follow us on twitter and subscribe to our feed via Feedburner.

Google to launch e-book sales service in July

No Comments