google entering ebookstore

[wellington1869]

this is very cool.

"Later this summer, Google plans to introduce its long-awaited push into electronic books, called Google Editions. The company has revealed little about the venture thus far, describing it generally as an effort to sell digital books that will be readable within a Web browser and accessible from any Internet-connected computing device. "
...
"Now one element of Google Editions is coming into sharper focus. Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country"
...
"Google is promoting its e-book plan as a fundamentally different and more “open” alternative to its rivals’ stores. Though it will act as a retailer and sell books from its own site, it will also behave like a wholesaler and allow independent bookstores and other partners to sell its e-books on their own sites"
...
"People who buy Google e-books will not be locked into any particular reading devices or book formats, the company said. Books bought from Apple’s iBookstore, by contrast, can be read only on Apple devices."

[EverythingIBM]

All the books out there are total garbage. They never have any of the books I'm looking for.

Google books has many titles I'm looking for though... it would be great if you could buy DIGITAL COPIES of them, rather then be redirected to buy the physical book... sometimes you can't buy it at all which relates to my original problem.

So yeah. This looks promising.

[wellington1869]

i figure google has the best chance of anyone right now to develop an infrastructure that might give itunes store a run for their money. competition is good. Also good that they're linking up with independent booksellers. I hope local indy bookshops find a way to survive, if this helps them, i think its good.

[hyperlinked]

i figure google has the best chance of anyone right now to develop an infrastructure that might give itunes store a run for their money. competition is good. Also good that they're linking up with independent booksellers. I hope local indy bookshops find a way to survive, if this helps them, i think its good.

I totally applaud anything that helps support the dying instutition of independent booksellers, but I'm a bit hazy as to how improving e-book sales is going to do that even if the ultimate beneficiary is a brick and mortar book seller. The only thing that makes Powell's books such an awesome place is that they have this massive bookstore that's several stories high and one block by one block in size. While any one book is fungible, the entire bookstore has unique value and it would seem to me that once the entire bookstore is electronic, the whole bookstore is pretty damn close to losing any redeeming identity that would make you want to go out of your way to support them.

I also see another problem that Google is getting into. Their branding is getting very very soupy. It's one thing to have a million different products when they're all assorted data products catering to power users and geeks, but once you're in the retail space, you can't become the next GE corporation in the span of a few years... not because you can't make products as good as GE, but you have a marketing problem in trying to be too many things too quickly to too many people.

It might be too soon to start up an open source format of e-books. I'm not saying this because I'm an Apple fanboy or an Amazon fanboy. I'm saying this because I think someone like Amazon or Apple needs to define what an e-book market is first before a collective approach can work. I don't think open source software would have gotten anywhere without commercial software preceeding it.

I say it's too soon because the average consumer doesn't want too much complexity and Google as a transaction broker just smells like a really tangled messy identity in the making. If I can choose to buy the same e-edition from Powell's books or direct from Amazon, I'd certainly make the extra effort to buy it from Powell's or some other indie store, but for your average middle aged Ma, the duplicity that's involved in the arrangement that Google's e-books *appears* to be heading to will make it hard for them to deliver clear messaging to the masses.

When I see Google make moves like this, it makes me want to double check to make sure none of my mutual funds owns too much Google. They have vast wealth and it's funding a great many adventures for them, but they don't have bottomless pits of money and I know for a fact that some of their departments are already understaffed and expanding into markets that they don't have any experience in is not going to reverse this problem.

I'm not anti-Google, BTW. A lot of what they do just doesn't make any business sense to me (and maybe that's why I'm not rich). Google does some really great things and have some really great services and I truly believe that of all companies that they actually try to do the right thing and should be applauded for it, but you can't act like the laws of marketing and brand identity don't exist.

You may buck the odds and thrive in spite of your actions because you've got such a good product, but eventually the fact that marketing matters will catch up to you and part of marketing is being able to have a very crisp and clear identity that people can understand. Google doesn't have that. Apple does, IBM does, HP does, Dell does, and Amazon does and when the day comes that cash becomes tight, those companies have leaned on the identities that they've built to hang on long enough to rebuild themselves.

I brought this up before and I'll bring it up again. See Yahoo as a cautionary tale. They acquired too big of an empire too quickly and once the endless pot of money stopped getting filled, they had too few resources to defend that empire and their size became a red ink bleeding liability. Anyone still think that Yahoo Music was a good idea or that AOL and Time Warner were a good fit because both were entertainment/media conglomerates?

[wellington1869]

I totally applaud anything that helps support the dying instutition of independent booksellers, but I'm a bit hazy as to how improving e-book sales is going to do that even if the ultimate beneficiary is a brick and mortar book seller. The only thing that makes Powell's books such an awesome place is that they have this massive bookstore that's several stories high and one block by one block in size. While any one book is fungible, the entire bookstore has unique value and it would seem to me that once the entire bookstore is electronic, the whole bookstore is pretty damn close to losing any redeeming identity that would make you want to go out of your way to support them.

this is a good point: how does going electric help the analog store? its a good question. I dont know the details of what they've worked out and i'd be interested in seeing it too.

I also definitely agree with you that bookstores (and libraries) have a quality that is more than the sum of their books. This may be particularly true of indy bookstores.

What I imagine they're doing: (based simply on a flight of my fancy and not on any hard facts):
--the book universe will soon divide into physical books and ebooks.
--there will always be a market for both, though the relative sizes of these markets will keep shifting with the times
--so there will always be some libraries and some bookstores (indy or major) to cater to physical book buyers and browsers
--both indies and majors though will also have to start selling ebooks. Thats where google thinks it can come in. It wants to be their broker. In line with the indy spirit, it will let them sell in any format they like and etc.
--ebook licenses are actually what is sold. Like with music, some form of DRM may come into place.  At the same time, just like with DRM-free music and mp3s, DRM-free book formats also will come into place (like ePub today, used by most libraries). You can give such an ebook to a friend for free (like DRM-free mp3's) but still cant sell them without attracting feds attention.

--So the resulting situation will be similar to what we see in the music business today

--There still exist cd stores, indy music cd stores, even vinyl record album stores today, alongside download sites, napster, torrents, itunes, and amazon, They'll all likely survive as outlets in some form.  (indies and majors) will carve out 'nostalgia' and 'browsing' niches in the market. They'll open coffee shops next to the counter and offer free wifi.

--how will they compete with ebooks? Why wont customer go to lowest price and thats end of story? But that didnt happen (despite the fears) with music business either. Price didnt turn out to be the bottom line. Various stores will carve out niches around clarity and quality of the ebook (font styles, features like annotations, wrapping and resizing, clarity, etc), and around the delivery system (ebook reader and its features, etc). They'll also compete on delivering live content (newspapers, magazines, blogs, videos, web) on the readers and make new content deals with new kinds of content creators (including indy bloggers).

--yes, a lot of current stores will go out of business (especially if they dont see whats coming and spread their bets correctly across the two universes -- physical and electronic).

--but it also wont be total armageddon any more than it was in music business's transformation. To some degree new and old businesses will  realign and survive alongside each other, though obviously in new proportions. Like with music industry today.

--indy booksellers will need to play the ebook game to survive though, that much is clear. And thats where google hopes to come in. In the process, it hopes to help set up an alternate distribution universe which features the equivalent of drm-free book formats and independent sellers who have much more control in the store that google is underwriting.

--how does google make money? it can take a percentage of each sale, like ebay. Think of the google model as ebay, and the itunes model as amazon. Major retailers go to sell at amazon; individuals and indy stores go to sell at ebay. But its not just that; the *structure* of the two stores is different - the pay structure, the licensing structure.  Amazon is intended to bring a relatively small number of retailers to a very large market of consumers. Ebay is intended to bring a very large market of sellers to a very large market of buyers. The former is a store; the latter is a broker.

[wellington1869]

I also see another problem that Google is getting into. Their branding is getting very very soupy. It's one thing to have a million different products when they're all assorted data products catering to power users and geeks, but once you're in the retail space, you can't become the next GE corporation in the span of a few years... not because you can't make products as good as GE, but you have a marketing problem in trying to be too many things too quickly to too many people.

good point; i agree that the last thing google should do is dilute its brand or spread itself too thin. But i'd argue in this case google is still in its core business. Google has been digitizing and archiving books for nearly a decade now. They got into that game early. Thats why they can even have a site like books.google.com, which is pretty heavily used by academics by the way. Major libraries including university libraries signed on long ago with google to digitize their entire library collections. Google  has been in the book business for a long time -- in the information business for a long time. Becoming a broker for indy booksellers adds to their core strength in that, isnt a dilution. I'm sure thats how they see it too.

It might be too soon to start up an open source format of e-books.

Not necessarily -- the ePub format has been the defacto standard ebook format for libraries for a while now. Its an open and free format, though it includes some optional features to allow 'expiration' of the ebook that you borrowed from your library, etc.

I don't think open source software would have gotten anywhere without commercial software preceeding it.

you may be right about that - at the same time, google is probably thinking that time frame has now passed and that the time is right for an open format to hit the market.  Why is the time right now? Hard to say, but as one indicator, look at the explosion of ereaders in the last year including from major retailers like barnes and noble etc; the potential of the iPad for book distribution and the ipad  already has huge widespread adoption, and the price competition and price drops resulting from the ereader competition (kindle readers for 189! Nook for 149! Just a year ago the prices were twice or thrice that). Lots of arguments to be made that the time is now and that the adoption of ebooks has shifted into gear. No, they're not mainstream yet -- but the point is to look ahead and get into the game in time.

When I see Google make moves like this, it makes me want to double check to make sure none of my mutual funds owns too much Google...I know for a fact that some of their departments are already understaffed and expanding into markets that they don't have any experience in is not going to reverse this problem.

we forget that search - and information - isnt google's primary business. Its primary business is advertizing. Its been in the retail business since its founding, therefore. It sells a population, a demographic -- us, you and me -- to retailers. In other words, it matches buyers with sellers. So what do you think it'll be doing as a broker for indy booksellers? Matching buyers with sellers. Its core business.

I'm not anti-Google, BTW. A lot of what they do just doesn't make any business sense to me (and maybe that's why I'm not rich). Google does some really great things and have some really great services and I truly believe that of all companies that they actually try to do the right thing and should be applauded for it, but you can't act like the laws of marketing and brand identity don't exist.

i dont think google is forgetting the laws of marketing at all; i think they're leveraging directly off their core business here. Which is being a broker between buyers and sellers, within the information industry.

[hyperlinked]

--indy booksellers will need to play the ebook game to survive though, that much is clear. And thats where google hopes to come in. In the process, it hopes to help set up an alternate distribution universe which features the equivalent of drm-free book formats and independent sellers who have much more control in the store that google is underwriting.

Certainly this is something that Google hopes to be a positive factor in, but I just don't see how it could work for the indie bookstore. The problem with having an e-book store and a print book store is that they are two totally different kinds of businesses simply for the reason that one deals with physical inventory and the challenges of moving actual goods and the other is purely an exercise in gaming your market. You are never out of stock in an e-books game and it's hard not to get into a game in which you are reduced to competing on price and once price is the only thing separating an indie bookstore from Amazon or Apple, there is no competition. They're toast.

I've built a handful of online stores for brick and mortar retailers before and there are dozens that I've turned away because I just see them wasting their time and money. I sit down with them and find out how savvy they are about online selling and usually they aren't. They want to get into it because they somehow got the notion that it was a logical place to expand. It sounds good until you start to itemize the skill sets required to run a thriving brick and mortar store and a thriving online business.

I know people with thriving retail storefronts and totally lackluster online storefronts. It's a different game and few small retailers have the skill set to compete in both. The problem starts at such a basic level. Forget worrying about their competency with Facebook or other social networking platforms. Most of these people can't write and in many cases they can't even spell. Tools and brokers will never solve this problem.

Anyway, I'm just ranting now. I hope this does something useful, but I think it's just an exercise of grasping at straws. I have serious doubts that what they set out to do will do much good, but it might open a door to something else we haven't thought of that will help indie businesses.

--how does google make money? it can take a percentage of each sale, like ebay. Think of the google model as ebay, and the itunes model as amazon. Major retailers go to sell at amazon; individuals and indy stores go to sell at ebay. But its not just that; the *structure* of the two stores is different - the pay structure, the licensing structure.  Amazon is intended to bring a relatively small number of retailers to a very large market of consumers. Ebay is intended to bring a very large market of sellers to a very large market of buyers. The former is a store; the latter is a broker.

I'd have to enroll in Business school to figure out the financials invovled in all this, but just from the simple man's view of things, I see a company that is straying from a high margin business that they dominate to enter a low margin business of which they are going to spend a lot of money to elbow their way into and they're doing this at a time in which they've burned through some of the good will that they've earned in recent years. They're not the media darlings they used to be.

What I'm trying to say is that Google spends an INSANE amount of money in the name of growing their market on things that are very questionable. They're like a self funded perpetual start-up. They're like their very own dot-com bubble in action. Venture Capitalists just need to have one good bet for dozens of bad bets to break even, but as we've seen lately, even VCs run short on green if too many of their bets break the wrong way. I just fear that they're still drinking from the fountain of irrational exuberance.

[itlnstln]

Wow, put two prolific writers in the same thread and you end up with the Great Text Wall of Geekhack.  You can even see it from space.

[hyperlinked]

Blame it on the Filco... well at least in my case.

It types too fast. I just hit a few letters, walk away, and it keeps going with out me. Best. Keyboard. Ever.

[itlnstln]

I'm trying to make up for a severe lack of webwit.

[wellington1869]

Blame it on the Filco... well at least in my case.

It types too fast. I just hit a few letters, walk away, and it keeps going with out me. Best. Keyboard. Ever.

this is what happens when you can type at about the same speed at which you think. (which either means I type fast or think slow, lol)

[wellington1869]

Certainly this is something that Google hopes to be a positive factor in, but I just don't see how it could work for the indie bookstore. The problem with having an e-book store and a print book store is that they are two totally different kinds of businesses simply for the reason that one deals with physical inventory and the challenges of moving actual goods and the other is purely an exercise in gaming your market. You are never out of stock in an e-books game and it's hard not to get into a game in which you are reduced to competing on price and once price is the only thing separating an indie bookstore from Amazon or Apple, there is no competition. They're toast.

but whats happening in the mp3/music business right now? Isnt it an analogous situation? There has been a lot of power shifts but the net result is a new mix of media and outlets and features.

Its true that ebooks will be a whole new game for indy stores, they'll have to learn it or die, no question about that. If they learn it though, it wont simply be about price any more than its simply about price for mp3s.

Anyway, I'm just ranting now. I hope this does something useful, but I think it's just an exercise of grasping at straws. I have serious doubts that what they set out to do will do much good, but it might open a door to something else we haven't thought of that will help indie businesses.

I think the indie business is headed for a cliff anyway; they have to get into the ebook game because ebooks are the future, for sure, just as mp3s were for the music industry. So yea, a lot of whats going on will be necessarily experimental in nature.

I see a company that is straying from a high margin business that they dominate to enter a low margin business of which they are going to spend a lot of money

i guess i see a company expanding its core business which is a natural progression. Information, books, and being the broker between buyers and sellers of information, is where google's core business is. Its not leaving that business here, its expanding it.
They even have the android platform now as a distribution network for the indies - an alternate distribution network from itunes/amazon etc, and they can offer the indies better terms on it than amazon/itunes would.

[hyperlinked]

this is what happens when you can type at about the same speed at which you think. (which either means I type fast or think slow, lol)

I'm a lot less dangerous than I used to be. The hand injury has one side benefit of making me more conscious about what I was typing. That injury is mostly better now, but I've kept the habit of usually looking at what I just spewed out before hitting the submit button... not usual enough though because I'll read some of old posts and think, "What an *******. Who's that?"  

[hyperlinked]

but whats happening in the mp3/music business right now? Isnt it an analogous situation? There has been a lot of power shifts but the net result is a new mix of media and outlets and features.

Yup, I'd say they're analogous and how have indie retailers in music and neighborhood retail chains fared? When a monstrosity like Tower Records closes down their retail chains and goes on to become a marginal player in selling mail order music and downloads, it doesn't look good for anyone smaller than Tower records.

[wellington1869]

Yup, I'd say they're analogous and how have indie retailers in music and neighborhood retail chains fared? When a monstrosity like Tower Records closes down their retail chains and goes on to become a marginal player in selling mail order music and downloads, it doesn't look good for anyone smaller than Tower records.

but thats exactly my point -- tower records could have become an emusic monolith, had they recognized which way the wind was blowing and jumped in to participate. They chose not to partiicipate, and they died. Indy stores too face that choice today: participate or die. They should learn from Tower Record's mistakes.

Tower records already had a brand name and they already had a network of brick and mortar outlets for browsers. They could have done exactly what barnes and noble is doing with books -- keeping b&m stores but ALSO getting into E-books; coming out with own reader and etc; and adjusting their stores for the browsers (coffee shop, wifi, read ebooks while in the store (as you can with the nook) etc)), and thus surviving the shifts rather than imploding.

Indy stores would do well to learn from tower records colossal mistakes and not miss the boat and pay attention to the need to play both markets.  

Its in such a scenario that google offers them an ebook lifeline. Until this deal, they were looking at being forced to enter into agreements with itunes or amazon on really pathetic terms. Google is offering them control and better terms.

The fact that ebooks are interchangeable plays to the independent stores' advantage. It equalizes the playing field for them when faced with the monoliths like barnes and noble. They can focus on what sets them apart - unique ambiance, specializing in unique topics, etc.  In other words, maintain their niche status.

[wellington1869]

I'm a lot less dangerous than I used to be. The hand injury has one side benefit of making me more conscious about what I was typing. That injury is mostly better now, but I've kept the habit of usually looking at what I just spewed out before hitting the submit button... not usual enough though because I'll read some of old posts and think, "What an *******. Who's that?"  

lol, I've often considered installing this add-in for MS Outlook,  where after you hit the send button on an email, it silently delays sending it for 5 minutes, so that you have a chance to pull it back, lol. IIRC they have an add-in like that for Thunderbird too.