Google announced today it will start selling e-Books through its Google Editions, putting Google squarely in competition against Amazon. Google's digital book store will not be device specific, giving it even greater competitive advantage to Amazon and the Kindle. In fact, any web enabled computer, e-reader or smartphone will be able to access digital books from the Google store.
The Google e-book store will launch sometime this summer and will have around 500,000 titles. The deal with publishers is not as competitive as self-publisher Lulu.com. Google will keep 37 percent of sales per book, far higher than Lulu's 20 or Amazon's 30 percent. But one of the greatest advantages of publishing through Google will be the searchable aspect on the web, based upon Google's indexing search. (Choice is good for the consumer.)
The e-reader market has exploded in terms of number of devices and sales. Just take a look at Apple and the iPad, which sold 1 million units in just about one month. Apple cannot manufacture these devices fast enough. As for downloads of e-books, Apple reports 1.5 million e-books were downloaded through iTunes. Google is also rumored to be launching its own e-reader device this year.
2010 is going to be the year of the e-reader!
If you have an e-reader, tell us what you like or don't like about it.
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