The Future of Books
by Gerald Trites

Google has announced the formation of a business - Google Editions - to sell electronic books that can be read on a number of devices. It represents an attempt to capitalize on their recent efforts at digitizing books in unprecedented quantities. In this new business, they say they will only be distributing books with the permission of the copyrightholder, where the copyright has not expired.

Google stands in a good place to offer direct and strong competition to Amazon and other publishers. Electronic readers are starting to take off. So far, they constitute as much as 5% of the total market. This is sometimes touted as a small percentage, but remember, good readers like the Kindle have only just started and are still expensive. It costs almost as much to buy a Kindle as it does to buy a desktop computer. This will change. Eventually, readers like the Kindle will be sold for perhaps $20 or perhaps given away in return for the purchase of books. Others are coming out with readers, like Apple. Smart phones are getting smarter and have a lot more power and storage space. It isn't hard to imagine smart phones impinging into the e-reader market.

Eventually, the electronic books market will be the majority of the book market. There seems little doubt about that. Google is placing itself in the market at an excellent time - just when the field is starting to heat up. For more, see this article.