4 ms·

Google Set to Launch E-Book Venture

• Groxx 16y ago
  Good God, I hope so. E-books are a joke right now, ridiculously walled-in, incompatible with many readers, and frequently mere OCR'd scans of the books they're supposed to be, instead of even doing basic linking like TOC / Index. Google book search alone does better than many publishers. More competition will be good for the game. And am I the only one who wants an open Android E-ink device? Stupid F*#^#& locked-down systems, crappy desktop software, and proprietary formats; it's no wonder they're not selling like hotcakes.
  • scorpioxy 16y ago
    That wasn't my experience. Oreilly I think has done a good job with this and so did Pragmatic Press among a few others. The good ones give you the choice of downloading in several formats to use on your different devices. I think that's a good thing to do. And I try to only support the ones that do that. My problem with some ebooks right now is the price point. Some publishers insist on maintaining the price of the ebook to be the same as that of the regular book. One would think that removing the printing costs and logistics would bring the cost down substantially.
    • Groxx 16y ago
      The problem is that such ease of use shouldn't require the small-time publishers to make what are seen as risky moves like that. And that it's tied to the publisher: they go down, they take my ability to retrieve what I paid for with them. Those two are particularly buyer-friendly, and I've purchased a few from them, but they're certainly not the standard.
• tomjen3 16y ago
  They talk blot about independent publishers, but most of the books people wants are not likely to come from those publishers. How will Google get these companies on board?