Ebooks Growing With Google Editions Coming in 2010

October 16, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team

Google has plans to take a share of the ebook market in 2010 with the expected premier of an online bookstore named Google Editions. At launch, Google plans to have roughly 500,000 book titles available from various publishers. Consumers will be able to shop for ebook titles for any ereader because, as of now, Google has no ereader product nor have there been any rumors of them coming out with one. This means that the ecommerce store will directly compete with Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com for ebook sales. In terms of revenue, the publishers look to get a very solid deal with ebooks selling from Google Editions netting them 63% with Google keeping the remaining 37%. In addition to direct sales, there are also plans to somehow integrate with Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com which will be their primary competition. In these scenarios the publisher of the ebook would only receive 45% and the majority of the remaining money would go to the partner site with Google taking a small cut.

Google Editions will continue the browser focused approach of the company where the ebooks can be used on any ereader, but also read online in a browser through any Internet connection. This is making investors second guess bets they may have made on the future of the ereader market as people could abandon them for an online only experience. Microsoft seems to be one of the bigger companies consumers assume would be in the mix of ereaders and ebooks, but they have reported having no plans to get into the space. Next year will be very interesting as Google Editions premiers and we will see if users continue to love buying ereaders or if they prefer to just read books on a computer or mobile phone via a web browser.