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."

Re:

[hackershandbook]

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

About time...

[crazyjeremy]

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...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that, I end up downloading homemade bootlegs of technical books when deciding which one I am going to purchase. I still end up going and paying full price in the bookstore, but I dont have to feel like I'm in the way as I stand in the aisle at B&N reading a chapter of each book on a subject trying to figure out which author is best for me.

Re:

[JackMeyhoff]

Why do you pay full price in the book store? Dont you order online?

Re:

[glitch23]

It's silly to spend cash on a book if you're not certain it's the right one...

I know how you feel. I use the same philosophy with my women.

Re:

[nutshell42]

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.)

Which browsers? It works fine in IE, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror and probably Safari (don't have a Mac but it says it does =). I assume you use Lynx?

I hope those publishers will allow Amazon to provide the same content as their own service, although I assume there'll be restrictions for technical books because for those it's generally easier to use their online versions excl

Re:

[AussieVamp2]

An older Linux distro and firefox version, no joy. It says upgrade to a later Flash version (which is the version I already have). So, another crap flash product. Still paranoid you might actually get some of the text??

It doesn't make much sense to me to make text, flash.

Baen

[flyingfsck]

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

Re:

[julesh]

Baen's library, while it's great, doesn't include all of their books. They choose which books to include mainly for promotional purposes, and allow authors to opt out.

Re:

[zeugma-amp]

Baen's library, while it's great, doesn't include all of their books. They choose which books to include mainly for promotional purposes, and allow authors to opt out.

While that is true, they do provide many books for free in an unencumbered format for download, DRM free, and have a WebScription [webscription.net] site that allows you to download others at a reasonable price, also completely DRM free.

Jim Baen got it, God rest his soul, and the company he left behind still does.

Re:

[BranMan]

And, to top it all off - every book I've seen on the site will let you read the first couple of chapters. Try before you buy. May they never change.

Re:

[AussieVamp2]

Yep. In html, so anything can read it, save it, or whatever, if you would like to put it on your pda, print it, put it on your mp3 player, or whatever.

You know, pretty much a text file. Not flash.

What a brilliant idea. Have samples be text.

Aggregate!

[gbulmash]

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

Re:

[JackMeyhoff]

That is assuming you know who the publisher is, what if you just know the title and author? Thats another step to do. Find the publisher.

Re:

[AussieVamp2]

Right. In the majority of cases, I do not care who the publisher of a book is, for some mainstream book. Whether MegaCorporation A or MegaCorporation B publishes Detective Novel C does not matter one iota to the person buying it, only that it is available.

Re:

[Oligonicella]

And the avatar of the "I want it free" crowd is another terrible twos kid shouting "GIMME!" Your point?

The only difference I can see is the first kid actually has the right to claim ownership and the second just wants it given to them.

Re:

[gbulmash]

And the avatar of the "I want it free" crowd is another terrible twos kid shouting "GIMME!" Your point?

Actually, they don't shout "gimme" (at least my terrible twoster doesn't). They just grab what they want and declare it theirs, or point at what they want and grunt.

But my point is that as we mature, we learn the benefits of cooperation and sharing, we can see the bigger picture and know when giving up some control will be to our benefit.

They're not offering the book search out of the goodness o

I'd be more impressed...

[Grendel Drago]

... 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.

If all books were accessible through Google Search

[nephridium]

What would be the incentive to buy a book then if you get yourself a tablet PC and live in an area with wireless LAN? You could even write your own additional software to make the text display just the way you like it. Unless you are a big fan of the look and feel of books.

The internet has become the new Gutenberg printing press: now copying and distributing information can be done with virtually no effort at all.

This is the crux of the copyright discussion we are having these times. How, in the long

Re:If all books were accessible through Google Sea

[sirambrose]

I don't understand what you're talking about. Google Books offers a full text book search that lets you see context without reading the entire book. It works just like the service discussed in the article, except it has books from multiple publishers.

Re:If all books were accessible through Google Sea

[rhyder128k]

Oh come on, you know how these discussions go. Creative people will be able to make money through "some more imaginative model". You just need to get hip to the new way of doing things.

I mean, no one will take advantage of the situation and try to get away with not paying for things. Apparently, there was one guy - once - who started downloading instead of buying his music. But apart from that guy, people only download to see if they like the thing, and if they do, they buy it.

I wish people like you would w

That'd be great, if anyone had actually said that.

[Grendel Drago]

Are you having the same discussion the rest of us are? I suggested that this initiative would be more useful if it were integrated with Google Book Search. nephridium thought I meant that they should all be available in a full-view format, which I didn't say. (I didn't explicitly say they should be restricted, but copyrighted books already are on Google Book Search.) sirambrose pointed out that Google Book Search doesn't work like that. Where exactly were these claims made?

doze only plugin?

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:

[Propaganda13]

Just tried to try it. It would not connect to Insight. Unless it gets larger after connection, that is a pretty small window.

Not that it has to be Google but

[pembo13]

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

[Randseed]

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).

Re:

[MollyB]

people who tow some party line

Nice imagery, but the expression is "toe the line", I believe. Agree with your post, but wish to prevent millions of readers from embedding a misperception...OTOH, maybe this is language usage evolving?

Re:

[rodentia]

millions of readers from embedding a misperception

It is an interesting image and an interesting testament to how far an auditor will allow for the absence of concrete value, but it would represent a misconception.

Publisher price fixing

[JackMeyhoff]

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?

Re:

[kalirion]

It's still up to the retailer. Recommended is just that - recommended. I've seen tons of bookstores have sales. I doubt they had to clear the sales with the publishers.

Linking to books to increase sales

[frisket]

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.

Re:

[basotl]

"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."

I could see some real value in what you are saying. I would love to be able to link to portions of s technical book or favorite fiction book. I could see how that would be a good selling attribute. It would really pique my interest in purchasing a book, if I saw some good parts linked on a blog or other online medium.

If this is good, it will lose them money

[segafreak]

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

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

[julesh]

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

[Omnifarious]

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.

+1, Righteous

[rodentia]

Brutha.

Nor when you vote are you a mere constituent, resident of some gerrimandered abstraction, but an active participant in the political nation: a citizen.