Google Prepares To Sell E-Book Access

Google Eyes Amazon, Prepares To Sell E-Book Access. When it happens I plans to sell my books online through Google. I believe Google will make it very easy for any book authors to be its partners just like the way Google deal with AdSense publishers: everyone invited; big sites /blogs and small ones and everywhere in the world. Unlike Yahoo or Microsoft.

Google Inc. (GOOG) on Monday confirmed that it plans to launch a program that will let publishers sell digital versions of their books directly to consumers, a step that would thrust the Internet search giant into competition with e-commerce leader Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN).

Google, Mountain View, Calif., said it aims to build a “digital book ecosystem” to allow partner publishers to sell access to their titles, even if buyers don’t have dedicated book readers such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony Corp.’s (SNE) Reader. The service was expected to launch by the end of this year.

News of Google’s plans was first reported by the New York Times and later confirmed by the company.

Google could prove to be a significant challenger for Amazon, which sells e-books specifically formatted to work with its proprietary Kindle. A key difference would be that the search giant aims to let Google Book Search users “buy access” to copyrighted books with any Web-enabled computer, e-reader or mobile phone.

Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said consumers would not be able to download books in the same way Amazon’s customers can buy copies of specific titles and store them on their Kindle. Instead, people who access books through Google would be able to read titles online and temporarily cache them in their Internet browsers so they could also read them offline.