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Old 12-18-2009, 06:48 AM   #1
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First official information on Google Editions

The first official information on Google Editions has been put online by Google.

Some excerpts from the Getting started with Google Editions page:

Quote:
Google Editions is an upcoming paid access product that will allow consumers to easily purchase and read digital editions of books. Consumers will be able to preview a book, as they do today in Google Books, and will also have the option to purchase its Google Edition. After purchase, the book will live in the consumer's online bookshelf, available to be accessed and read on most devices with internet access and a web browser; as well as on supported partner devices (to be announced during our public launch).
Google Editions will be offered through the Google Books program. Existing partners (publishers) will be able to sell access to their uploaded books.

Interestingly, Google will offer the Adobe content server 4 drm scheme. Publishers can also choose not to apply drm. No words about ebook formats, but I assume that the service is based on the pdf files that are already stored in the Google Books database (no ePub can be uploaded as far as I know).

Google Editions will be made available for online reading online, as can be understood from the security page:

Quote:
Each consumer's Google Edition has a unique coding that caches the book when it is accessed through a browser (as opposed to a digital download; see more information on file protection here). This means that the Google Edition is broken down into fragments and temporarily stored in - and accessed through - the browser window. The Google Editions web experience, therefore, is not that of a file download - it is an experience that is optimized for reading in the browser. This allows Google to detect and protect against abuse of each Google Edition.
The publishers can set the retail price for each publication (but it should not exceed 100% of the print price). Publishers can also offer bundles; so that readers can get access to the digital edition when buying a print copy.

Copy-paste and printing limitations can also be set by the publisher:

Quote:
You can also choose to allow buyers to copy, paste and print your Google Editions without restriction. By default, consumers will only be able to copy and paste up to 20% of a book's content over a sixty day period. Additionally, consumers by default can print 100% of their purchased Google Editions but are limited to printing 20 pages per single print command.
Google Editions will be launched somewhere in 2010. It is not clear yet whether only U.S. based publishers can participate, or that Editions will also be open to publishers worldwide.

It will be interesting to see how publishers, readers and booksellers will react to Google Editions. I think that the platform agnostic approach is a very clever move from Google. But since there are no details yet on how Google Editions can be read on dedicated ereaders or smartphones, it is difficult to speculate on how Editions will influence the market share of Amazon, B&N etc.

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