Book Publishers Agree to Online Browsing

eldavojohn writes "Random House & HarperCollins have agreed to allow book browsing and searching on all their books. According to the article, 'Book publishers are to trying to update their businesses as more young readers consume media via the Web, a trend that already has affected the music, movie and newspaper industries.' I am definitely looking forward to more publishers following suit. It's not that far of a stretch to imagine a person searching for a book, finding something else and then buying both books."

About time...

It's about time! Now I hope they make it simple to use and search (Amazon's is clunky, only shows a couple pages and incompatible with many browsers.) When I'm purchasing online, I will ONLY buy books that I am familiar with especially when it's a technical book. It's silly to spend cash on a book if you're not certain it's the right one...

Baen

Baen has been doing this for years: http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]

Aggregate!

Great, so they'll let you search their books... through their interface on their site. So if I wanted to search through multiple publishers, if they all follow this example, I'll have to go search each publisher separately. Pardon me if I'm not doing cartwheels.

I'd say that eventually someone will engineer a metasearch that hits each publisher's search engine with queries and then either screenscrapes or does some other jujumagumbo to try to extract pertinent info from each set and create some semblance of organization, but I'll bet you that the Terms and Conditions on each publisher's site prohibit this and IF someone creates such a beast, they'll be seeing the C&D's come flying in.

When all is said and done, searching one publisher's catalog at a time is of limited usefulness. And while this may represent a step in the right direction, it also shows that the avatar of most major IP owners is still a kid in the midst of its terrible twos, shouting "MINE!"

- Greg

I'd be more impressed...

... if they released their content to Google Book Search. It's not really that useful for me if it's not integrated with a larger search engine--and I'll wager their interface ends up being not nearly as clean or useful as Google's. It might, but it's not likely.

doze only plugin?

I can't wait to see what kind of windows only browser plugin they come up with to do this...

(Hey, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, but I doubt it).

Not that it has to be Google but

Why didn't they go through a single company/entity that has a track record of reliable search? Each to their own isn't really going to help. Unlike music, books can be considered physical things, and many people, myself included do _not_ like reading books online. If I like a book for a partiuclar topic, I will buy it.

Too little, too late

Unfortunately, this is far too little, too late. What has been happening in the scientific community for literally years now is that the individuals who are performing research and are not financially strapped to some journal are getting their research peer-reviewed themselves, then publishing it. In reality, what this means is that they publish their research along two paths: one, to satisfy some journal, and two, to get reviewed by other means. If you sit around and do a Medline search on it, you'll get the former. But if you really try, you'll get the latter.

So what's the difference, you ask? People who are involved in rather esoteric research areas, which includes things like stem cell research for example, release this stuff among themselves. Peer review is all well and good, but this material is released far before it achieves journal publication. This is both good and bad. It's good because it gets distributed. It's bad because the peer-review simply isn't there _except_ for the investigator's colleagues critisizing it.

In other words, the research community has become somewhat self-contained itself. We're all too aware of the ridiculous biases that exist in the "public" sector (in other words, those people who tow some party line because it gets them more funding).

Publisher price fixing

One thing that should be illegal is Recommended Retail Prices and Manufacturers Retail Price "guides" for price control of books (and indeed any other product including computer / console games). It is up to the retailer to decide what price they wish to sell it at. If they ask too much people just walk out and order elsewhere or online. If they ask less then they get more customers. Isnt that what competition is about?

Linking to books to increase sales

It's not that far of a stretch to imagine a person searching for a book, finding something else and then buying both books."

That's not the only business model, either. If the text is accessible online, then publishers could allow deep linking into a book. That way you could point someone at a quote, or a section, or a page, even just a phrase, without the need for them to download the entire thing. Exposing someone to a book this way is an excellent opportunity to sell it to them. Assuming the books are in SGML or XML, implementing this method is almost trivial.

If this is good, it will lose them money

I can't help but feel that if they actually make a good service which allows browsing and searching on all their books free of charge (i.e. you can read an entire book without paying for it) then this will lose them money! Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of printed books, but I'm also an impoverished student - if I can get it for free I'm unlikely to pay for it. As the article says they're trying to target younger people who are more used to the web, the same probably applies. However I guess the chances of them providing a free system that is actually good enough to use in this fashion is pretty slim given current examples....

So they have e-pub rights for all of their books?

I'm not entirely sure how they expect to be able to legally do this. I mean, this was one of the things that got Google into trouble with their book search service: they accepted publishers' words that they had the legal right to grant permission for this, when in many (if not most) cases, only the authors of the books have the necessary legal rights to put copies of them online. Most publishing contracts, even now, do not grant the publisher permission to do this. Copyright remains with the authors in most cases.

Consumer is a dirty word

I do not 'consume' media. I read books. The books are there after I've read them. They are not 'consumed'. Additionally, I write things about books, and I write things in general. Relegating me to the passive role of 'consumer' is demeaning. I am a customer, not a consumer. The important relationship I have with Harper Collins is that I buy the books they produce. This makes me a customer.

Re:Finally!

Some of us "get it" - but we have been here for a number of years and don't have vast amounts of money tied up in copyright and intellectual property rights. The first and most important thing is to *own your property* My deal with Carlton gives me absolute freedom with the text I wrote - it only stamps on publishers who might pirate the book - hence the fact that the entire HTML-ised version of "Complete Hackers Handbook" is available for free. I own it - I can do what I want with it - lets keep it that way .... Creative Copyright is a great tool also - but if you get signed to a publisher - make sure you own what you created ...