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Ramblings

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Nov 3rd 2005 3:27pm





Amazon To Sell Books By The Page, Explaining Why Publishers Hate Google

from the that-explains-it dept

theodp writes "Further shaking up the book world, Amazon will sell digital access to books by the page through its Amazon Pages program, which will allow people to "inexpensively" buy chapters from a book and read them online. Complete online access to the book will be available via another service called Amazon Upgrade. Amazon didn't specify prices in its press release." Suddenly the reason why publishers and authors are so pissed off at Google becomes a little bit clearer. They think that they're going to be able to slice and dice their books, selling little pieces of the book as people want them. They're taking a page from the entertainment industry -- and, like that industry, they're going to discover this plan won't work very well. They've just added friction in the form of additional transaction costs, both mental and monetary to finding information.

7 Comments | Leave a Comment

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  1.  
    identicon
    thatguy, Nov 3rd, 2005 @ 3:54pm

    ...

    Times like these make me happy about never learning to read.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Rikko, Nov 3rd, 2005 @ 5:03pm

    Somebody actually got paid to come up with that id

    Well, if nothing else this should inject a little life blood into the e-book piracy community.

    Nice work, boneheads.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Nov 3rd, 2005 @ 7:38pm

    Re: Somebody actually got paid to come up with tha

    Obviously. Ever heard of something called a library? I believe it is somewhere you get books, for free. Or so I am told.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    cnote, Nov 3rd, 2005 @ 11:13pm

    I'd pay

    If Amazon has the searching functions right, I'd probably pay for it. Many technical books have chapters that are appropriate to what I do, and chapters that are completely inappropriate to what I do. I'd be nice if there were a compromise between what Google had offered and what Amazon is offering. I think that the authors deserve money for their books, but we have the right to figure out if that book, or sections of that book are right for us.
    Traditional bookstores offer us the option of thumbing through books. There isn't a great equivalent online.
    Some technical books cost 80-120 dollars. What if I want to look at a single topic in one of these books? The author should deserve the work that he put into this. He should get the money from me that I'm willing to pay for the chapter.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Nov 4th, 2005 @ 1:04am

    Re: I'd pay

    I bet your customers would LOVE for you to use the same pricing structure with them:

    "We will give you 2.00 for that widget. Don't like it, too bad - you deserve what we are willing to pay you!"

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    Newob, Nov 4th, 2005 @ 5:19am

    Re: I'd pay

    Or we can just put all the information on Wikipedia. Facts aren't copyrighted.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  
    identicon
    Anonymous, Nov 4th, 2005 @ 8:13am

    Book Stores

    You know what you can always do too is to read a chapter or too at a book store. they make it easier and easier to accomadate you with that. Their return policy is rediculous too. Any employee will tell you that you can easily buy a book, read it, and return it for a full refund. Shady yes, but so what.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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