Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Google Told to Get Bent by Publishers.

While the world has been watching Apple and Amazon's book arrangements it appears that Google has been working on their own. Gizmodo is reporting that Google has plans to sell e-books to anyone with a screen. Which is good since competition is usually a good thing. The only problem is, the Publishers don't quite see it that way.

Apparently the book Publishers, strengthened by their new deal with Apple (and soon to be Amazon), decided to tell Google to take a hike with their offer. Apparently, Google was offering the Publishers a deal that would give the Publishers 63 percent of the revenue, which is a bit lower than the 70 percent they get from Apple. Also, apparently Google's idea to make the store search able wasn't cool with the Publishers either, as well as, Google's idea to allow customers to cut and paste portions of a book, and allow printing of segments of books.

Unfortunately, the Publishers have not only been able to raise their prices, they have also managed to force Google to cave into their demands. Google will no longer have the bookstore search able and the cut and paste and printing of books is out. Which sucks since everyone knows that when you buy a print book you are free to share the book with others. To photocopy sections for personal use. So it kind of terrible that Publishers would want to try to prevent people from having the same ability with the electronic version of their books.  Certainly, I can understand their decision given the fears over piracy, but its a bit of a fool hearty idea that by simply applying some kind of DRM a company will be able to protect their work.  Its only a matter of time that someone will crack the copy protection and the books will be available online.

I think companies need to start working on ways to monetize their work in other ways.  God bless them in the pursuit of protecting their work.  I just know its a futile attempt and its their customers that will suffer before these Publishers finally figure out what they are going to do with their books.

No comments:

Post a Comment