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Amazon.com Inc. previewed a service to sell just a few pages or chapters of a book—allowing one of the world’s oldest mediums to be chopped up and customised like an album on iTunes. Although he offered few details, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said Amazon customers soon would be able to buy snippets of books for as little as a few cents a page. That might come in handy for tourists planning a trip, chefs seeking recipes or students assigned one chapter in an expensive textbook. The service could help the Internet retailer emerge as a more publisher-friendly digital library than Google Inc., which on Thursday launched a free database of online books. Unlike Google, Amazon plans to offer books only with the blessings of their publishers. Analysts said Amazon’s approach, which builds on a current feature that offers a peek into some books, expands the online experience and prepares for a day when people are more accustomed to reading long passages of text on the computer. "It makes it more like browsing in a bookstore," said Think Equity Partners analyst Edward Weller, "and you don’t even have to put your clothes on." John Sargent, chief executive of Holtzbrinck Publishers, a company whose publishers include St. Martin’s Press and Farrar Straus and Giroux, said the success of Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store gives him hope that book publishers and authors can find an online business model that gives them a fair share of the proceeds. "This is a brave new world," he said. Amazon said it would sell a digital "upgrade" to some books for an additional fee. For example, a computer programmer who buys a software manual would receive the book in the mail, but could also read through the digital version from any Web browser. "The search engines have been working on book-copying strategies themselves," said Legg Mason analyst Scott Devitt. "This is Amazon showing people it, too, has a pretty compelling database of book text." In contrast, Google has been scanning a vast numbers of books to add to its Google Print search engine—many without permission from the publishers. Its partners include the University of Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, the New York Public Library, and Oxford. Last week, it opened its digital library with thousands of books that are out of print or no longer under copyright. Users can search for particular keywords among the pages, or read the books from start to finish on their computer screens. But the fact that it displays ads beside search results infuriates many publishers. Trade groups representing publishers and authors have sued Google for copyright infringement, arguing that the Internet company has no right to scan entire books, even if it doesn’t display these in full. Google argues that the scanning is allowed and that its program can help boost sales by making titles easier to find. — LATWP |
