Google Inc. is launching a new online service that will let readers buy electronic versions of books and read them on such gadgets as cell phones, laptops and possibly e-book devices.
The company said Google Editions marks its first effort to earn revenue from its Google Books scanning project, which attempts to make millions of printed books available online. Although the scanning program has faced complaints from authors and publishers over copyright, Google Editions will cover only books submitted and approved by the copyright holders when it launches next year.
It's part of an ambitious plan that Google first publicly discussed several months ago at a book conference in New York.
By the time Google Editions makes its debut, the Internet search leader hopes to have an even larger selection of digital books available as part of a legal settlement with authors and publishers. The year-old settlement still requires U.S. court approval and is being revised to address the U.S. Justice Department's worries that the arrangement could be abused to drive up the prices for electronic books.
The books bought through Google Editions will be accessible on any device that has a Web browser, including smart phones, netbooks and personal computers and laptops, putting Google in competition with Amazon.com Inc. and its Kindle e-book reader.
Consumers can buy directly from Google or from any number of online booksellers and other retail partners using the Google Editions platform. Google will actually host the e-books and make them searchable.
"We expect the majority will go to retail partners, not to Google," Tom Turvey, head of Google Book Search's publisher partnership program, said Thursday at the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair. "We are a wholesaler, a book distributor."
Many publishers have been unhappy that Amazon and others have been charging just $10 for most e-books, a price that could hurt sales the more expensive hardcover. Google said publishers will get to set prices under its system.
Publishers will get nearly two-thirds of revenue for direct sales by Google. When a retail partner is involved, publishers will get 45 percent, with the retailer getting a "vast majority" of the rest.
Electronic books are gaining in popularity, led in part by devices like Amazon's Kindle and Sony Corp.'s new Reader Pocket Edition. Publishers estimate the size of the e-book market at anywhere from 1 percent to 5 percent of total sales, but it is growing quickly.
Sony's eBook Store includes more than 100,000 books, as well as a million free public-domain books available from Google. The Kindle Store currently has more than 330,000 available titles.
Turvey expects Google's program will start with 400,000 to 600,000 books in the first half of 2010. Google has made digital copies of 10 million books in the past five years, but can only show snippets from most of them because of copyright restrictions.
Books bought through Google Editions will be stored on the device and readable without a live Internet connection.
The new Google program comes as the Mountain View, Calif.-based company continues to fend off criticisms over its book-scanning program.
On Thursday, Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said criticism from the German government resulted from a "misunderstanding" regarding book copyrights.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly video podcast last weekend that the Internet carries "significant dangers" for the rights of authors.
"For the (German) government, it is clear that copyright also must find its place on the Internet," she said. "That is why we reject books simply being scanned in without any copyright protection, as is being done by Google."
Drummond said Google Books is using the U.S. "fair use" principle as its guide in the United States.
A U.S. District Court judge in New York set a Nov. 9 deadline for Google and copyright holders to submit a new agreement to settle the dispute over Google's effort to attain digital rights to millions of out-of-print books. Google hopes to sell many of those books, too, with most of the revenue going to authors and publishers.
The Justice Department filed papers last month, saying the original agreement "raises significant legal concerns" and was likely to conclude that it breaks federal antitrust law.
Drummond said Google expects that lawsuit to be resolved by November, with a few changes to the deal it reached with U.S. publishing firms a year ago.
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