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Google and Amazon Lift a Page From iTunes Playbook

Posted on: Sunday, 6 November 2005, 09:00 CST

By Edward Wyatt

In a race to become the iTunes of the publishing world, Amazon.com and Google are both developing systems to allow consumers to purchase online access to any page, section or chapter of a book. The programs would combine the companies' already available systems for searching books online with a commercial component that could revolutionize the way that people read books.

The idea is to do for books what Apple has done for music, allowing consumers to buy and download parts of individual books for their own use rather than trek to a store or receive them by mail. Consumers could purchase a single recipe from a cookbook, for example, or a chapter on rebuilding a car engine from a repair manual.

The initiatives are already setting off a tug-of-war among publishers and the potential vendors over who will do business with whom and how to split the proceeds. Random House, the biggest publisher in the United States, proposed a micropayment model on Thursday in which readers would be charged about 5 cents a page, 4 cents of which would be shared between the publisher and the author. That Random House has already developed such a model indicates that it supports the concept, and other publishers are likely to follow.

The proposals could also become bargaining chips in current lawsuits against Google by trade groups representing publishers and authors. These groups have charged that the Internet company is violating copyrights by making digital copies of books from libraries for use in its book-related search engine. But if those copies of older books on library shelves that have long been absent from bookstores started to produce revenue for publishers and authors, the trade groups might drop some of their objections.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild which filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Google in September over its Google Print program on Thursday called the Amazon announcement "a positive development."

"This is the way it's supposed to work: to give consumers access to books and have revenues flow back to publishers and authors," Aiken said. "Conceptually, something similar might be possible for the Google program."

Amazon said Thursday that it was developing two programs that would begin next year. The first, Amazon Pages, is intended to work with the company's "search inside the book" feature, which allows users to search its books and then buy and read online whatever pages they need. The second program, Amazon Upgrade, will allow customers to add online access to their purchase of a physical copy of a book.

Jeffrey Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, said in an interview that he believed consumers would be able to download, copy and print out whatever portions of the book they buy, for a vast majority of books. But, he added, that decision would ultimately be left up to the publisher or the author.

Google is working to develop a similar system, according to executives at three publishing companies that have been briefed by Google on its efforts.

Using its Google Print site, users would be able to search Google's digitized library of books, then buy either an entire book or only the relevant portions.

Nate Tyler, a Google spokesman, declined to comment on the company's plans, saying only that it was "exploring other economic models." Microsoft, meanwhile, also is investing in a book- scanning program called MSN Book Search. The software giant announced last month that it was joining the Open Content Alliance, which groups several U.S. university libraries, the National Archive of Britain and the British Library.

Yahoo had earlier joined the group, which is working to digitize the contents of millions of books and put them on the Internet, with full text accessible to anyone, while respecting the rights of copyright holders.

Tyler said Google welcomed the Amazon program. "Amazon is a valuable partner, and we link to Amazon so people can buy books they've found with Google Print," he said. "We're glad our users will have additional ways to access the books they've found using Google Print."

Google and Amazon would each seem to have some advantages over the other in the development of their programs. Amazon already has the credit card numbers of a large population of potential users of the service and is familiar to people seeking to buy books and other goods.

Google, meanwhile, is the first stop for most people searching electronically for anything. And Google has the potential to have a far greater collection of materials, given its program to copy digitally much of the collections of five major research libraries and make that content searchable on its site.

Currently, the Google Print program provides free online access to the full content of books no longer under copyright, but only limited viewing of portions of books that are still under copyright. Under the plans being developed by Google, publishers say, those copyrighted books could be bought in whole or in part.

"We've had conversations with both Google and Amazon over the past few months" about their search and purchase systems, said Richard Sarnoff, president of Random House's corporate development group.

By creating a financial model under which the Amazon and Google programs could work, Sarnoff said Random House was "planting a flag, trying to establish some ground rules that we are comfortable with to create this new kind of commerce around book content."

The Random House model would allow consumers to buy access to a book for about 5 cents a page for most books, or about 25 cents a page for cookbooks and other specialty publications.

The model calls for users to gain online access, though not to be able to copy or print the page. But "if consumers absolutely demand certain kinds of access," like the ability to print, Sarnoff said, "it would be important to provide that."

David Steinberger, chief executive of Perseus Books Group, said he welcomed the new initiatives and believed it was important that a number of companies were working to develop these services, giving consumers broader choices and types of material available.

"This is a much more significant development than we saw during the Internet boom," when scores of companies rushed to develop e- books complete books that could be downloaded onto an electronic reader. "This time," Steinberger said, "it looks like this really might happen."

Source: International Herald Tribune

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