The article below originally appeared in our Weekly Book Newsletter, back in February, but with the recent mainstream coverage of the fact Google is planning to sell ebooks, we thought it might be worth re-posting here: 

As an addendum event to the digital publishing symposium in Melbourne, a ‘digital chat’ session featuring Google’s Chris Palma, was held in February at the State Library of Victoria.

Palma took the audience through the concepts of the Google Books publisher partner program, in which publishers allow Google to scan the full text of books and then make percentages of this content viewable by customers on the publisher’s website or through Google’s search engine.

Interestingly, Palma said that when publishers in the program increased the percentage of the full-text that was viewable, the hits on the publisher’s ‘buy’ button for those books increased. While he did not recommend making the full 100% available to read he did say that ‘north of 20%’ resulted in more purchases.

Google Editions
Palma also outlined the workings of Google Editions, an ebook warehouse ‘in the cloud’ that would allow readers to purchase ebooks (in the case of Google Editions a license to read the electronic version of the book anywhere ‘in perpetuity’) via Google, a publisher’s website or through retailers’ sites (the latter being Google’s professed preference).

Under the Google Editions model, a book’s publisher retains 63% of revenue from a book sale while Google retains the remaining 37% or splits it with any retailer (in a split that is individually negotiated).

Some in the audience voiced concern that Google would ultimately push booksellers out of the supply chain, a claim that Palma insisted was not the case, emphasising that Google was not good at ‘merchandising’ and that its speciality was its search capability. ‘It’s about surfacing books’ for Google users who might not otherwise even have considered purchasing one, he said.

[Then] Australian Booksellers Association CEO Malcolm Neil [update: Neil has since joined REDgroup Retail, owner of Borders, Angus & Robertson and Whitcoulls in Australia and New Zealand, as Communications manager] said he was not concerned about Google’s entry into the digital supply chain and that it could in fact be of benefit, especially to independent booksellers. ‘I’m particularly excited about Google Editions,’ he said. ‘In the world of internet behemoths Google is more bookseller-friendly than most.’