

Google Set to Launch E-Book Venture - grellas
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704369304575632602305759466.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

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Groxx
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.

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scorpioxy
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.

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Groxx
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.

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tomjen3
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?

