Amazon To Sell Books By The Page, Explaining Why Publishers Hate Google
from the that-explains-it dept
theodp writes "Further shaking up the book world, Amazon will sell digital access to books by the page through its Amazon Pages program, which will allow people to "inexpensively" buy chapters from a book and read them online. Complete online access to the book will be available via another service called Amazon Upgrade. Amazon didn't specify prices in its press release." Suddenly the reason why publishers and authors are so pissed off at Google becomes a little bit clearer. They think that they're going to be able to slice and dice their books, selling little pieces of the book as people want them. They're taking a page from the entertainment industry -- and, like that industry, they're going to discover this plan won't work very well. They've just added friction in the form of additional transaction costs, both mental and monetary to finding information.
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Somebody actually got paid to come up with that id
Nice work, boneheads.
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Re: Somebody actually got paid to come up with tha
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I'd pay
Traditional bookstores offer us the option of thumbing through books. There isn't a great equivalent online.
Some technical books cost 80-120 dollars. What if I want to look at a single topic in one of these books? The author should deserve the work that he put into this. He should get the money from me that I'm willing to pay for the chapter.
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Re: I'd pay
"We will give you 2.00 for that widget. Don't like it, too bad - you deserve what we are willing to pay you!"
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Re: I'd pay
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Book Stores
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