Google has announced that in 2010 it will be launching its own ebook store.
Google announced today at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany that it will be launching its own ebook store in June 2010 called “Google Editions”. Previous reports had placed the launch in June 2009, but no word has yet been given to the year-long delay of rolling out the store.
The new store is expected to have around 500,000 titles at the time it launches, and if Google itself doesn’t have the book, sales will be handled through both Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s respective online book stores.
With a bevy of e-readers already on the market, and more coming from the likes of Barnes & Noble within the coming weeks, Tom Turvey, Google’s director of strategic partnerships, bluntly stated that the company has no intentions of launching its own e-reader. The new books will be cross-platform, with consumers being able to access the books they purchase via their computers, e-readers, smartphones and other devices by simply accessing their Gmail accounts.
Books sold directly through Google will result in the publisher getting 63 percent of the sale, and the other 37 percent staying with Google itself. In the case of Google being a conduit for other retailers, the split will work out as 55 percent going to a company such as Amazon with Google keeping the remaining 45 percent.
The biggest change to the standard ebook store format is that publishers will be able to set their own prices for the books as opposed to the Kindle store from Amazon where the retailer dictates the pricing.
The biggest boon to this store is going to be the fact it can be read on so many devices. With Kindle books being limited due to their format, it is almost a certainty that Amazon has lost out on potential sales due to people not wanting to pay hundreds of dollars for the brand-specific device. Ebooks that can be read on just about any device? Sign me up.
