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Plug Your Book!
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Safeguards are built into Google Book Search, similar to Amazon’s
Search Inside the Book. Users can view a limited number of pages of a
low-resolution image of pages that can’t be printed easily or saved. A
portion of the book is kept offline so users wouldn’t be able to see the
whole book even if they had several different Google accounts.
A separate project, Google Library, is often confused with Google
Book Search. The program is digitizing millions of books from six
leading public and university library partners. The Library program has
been controversial among many publishers because Google isn’t asking
for permission of rights holders before scanning the books.
Instant Online Access
Google’s first consumer bookselling initiative is called Instant
Online Access. Consumers can purchase a perpetual license to view the
entire contents of a book online. Publishers set the price for Instant
Online Access, and Google keeps a 30 percent commission on sales.
Because selling online access to books might cannibalize sales of
physical books, Google seems to be promising publishers that it will
deliver more impulse purchases than brick-and-mortar bookstores. The
program could promise better profit margins for publishers by freeing
them from printing and distribution costs. For example, publishers keep
as little as 30 percent of a paper book’s cover price, with the rest split
among bookstores, wholesalers, and distributors.
Ad-Supported Access
Only 20 percent of a book’s content normally is available for viewing
in a given month on Google Book Search. However, publishers who are
interested in publishing advertising-supported books can set the
viewable percentage as high as they wish, all the way to 100 percent
viewable. When publishers choose this Ad-Supported Access model,
Google optimizes its ads for the book, trying to maximize revenue for the
publisher. One publisher of travel books has enrolled all its titles in Ad-
Supported Access on the theory that it won’t hurt sales, while providing
more chances that buyers will notice the books and decide to buy one.
Why would someone pay money for a book they can read for free on
their computer monitor? A good percentage of travelers who are actually
going on a trip to Italy, for example, will prefer to carry a pocket-sized
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