ARTICLE: Internet Archive BookServer

[ekaser]

From CNet News:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10378573-52.html

An initiative in the works from the nonprofit Internet Archive to centralize the electronic distribution of commercially viable books could upend the publishing industry and declaw Amazon.com, an industry analyst said.

On Monday, the Internet Archive, which among other things has been working for some time to digitize countless numbers of public domain texts, showed the first public look at its BookServer project, an initiative its dubs, "The future of books."

[ahi]

Is it not yet open for publishers to submit commercial titles?

I can find no information on that, though otherwise it already seems to be online and working.

- Ahi

[ahi]

It seems like they have only three sources for their catalogue at this time:

http://www.archive.org/bookserver/ca...providers.html

Does that mean they aren't offering a sales platform for publishers and authors, only links to wherever the eBook in question is already sold?

- Ahi

[ekaser]

Originally Posted by ahi

It seems like they have only three sources for their catalogue at this time:

http://www.archive.org/bookserver/ca...providers.html

Does that mean they aren't offering a sales platform for publishers and authors, only links to wherever the eBook in question is already sold?

My impression (and it's JUST an impression), is that the Archive's goal is to act as a "clearing house" slash "search engine" slash "repository" slash "whatever they come up with and decide to do". It seems to me that they're basically setting themselves up as a sort of InkMesh search engine that's more tightly integrated with various Publishers. But it's all still very nebulous. My take is that this announcement was a step towards starting to work out agreements with publishers, and getting "word of mouth" out on the internet about what they're trying to do, while still being in the early stages of what they're trying to do, and not being entirely clear about what they're trying to do.

Or maybe it's just the article that wasn't entirely clear. I suspect that the Internet Archive folks probably have a fairly clear vision of what it is they want to do, they're just not communicating it to the general public very well yet.