San Francisco — In an attempt to expand its services to its close neighbors, search engine behemoth Google has entered the crowded Canadian eBook market Tuesday, unveiling its online store at http://books.google.ca/ebooks, which aims to compete for readers with the likes of Amazon, Kobo and Apple, and is offering thousands of paid titles and nearly 2 million public domain books free of charge.
Initially, Google’s eBookstore first opened its virtual doors in December 2010 in the United States. However, the company believes that Canadians should also have access to the books they want, as well as be able to effortlessly read books on the device they choose, and should be able to buy books from the bookstore of their choice.
The company claims that its new eBooks store is distinctive because it is designed to be open and in the cloud, indicating that users can purchase their titles and access it from wherever they last left off on virtually any device: PCs and Netbooks; Android and Apple tablets and smartphones; and compatible eReaders, like the Kobo, Reader from Sony, and Barnes & Noble Nook. However, Amazon’s Kindle, would not be compatible with titles bought at Google’s ebook store.
“When you purchase a Google eBook you actually get it in an open format — you do not need to buy any device from us. You can effortlessly read a Google eBook on any device that supports an open standard,” Scott Dougall, director of product management for Google Books, said from California.
Interestingly, you will also have access to the global Google cloud — so wherever you move, your books will be available there and accessible to you instantly.
You might search a title, or maybe just a topic, and if the topic search suggest a book that is among the hundreds of thousands of titles available for purchase at the Google eBookstore, and not to mention many classics and over 2 million public domain books already available for free, around 10 per cent of the book becomes available for preview.
In fact, paid titles on offer include publications from major publishers such as Penguin, Random House and Harper Collins. Also, with this new service, Google offers Canadian and international publishers an additional way to promote, distribute and sell their content to Canadians through Google eBooks, a digital books ecosystem. The Google eBookstore boasts partnerships with all major Canadian publishing houses and a catalog full of Canada’s best known authors.
Google has also partnered with two prominent Canadian bookstores McNally Robinson, a Winnipeg-based independent bookstore and the Kingston-based Campus Bookstore, and we are open to other retailers who wants to sell their books online. We are offering Canada’s Independent bookstores the tools they need to join the digital economy.
Moreover, this latest association with Google is similar to selling any other book on our website, said Paul McNally of McNally Robinson. Earlier, we offered real books and now eBooks as well.
Eventually, to get a sense of pricing on the Google eBookstore, Digital Home priced the recently released Steve Jobs biography and the New York Times (NYT) current bestsellers in Fiction and Non-Fiction at all the four major online bookstores.
However, Google’s pricing was consistent with what was found at Kobo and Apple and lower than what could be found at Amazon’s Kindle store.
Steve Jobs:
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Amazon Kindle Store – $20.72
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Apple – $17.99
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Google eBookstore – $17.99
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Kobo – $17.99
Still, Google is banking on the fact that its broad selection and versatility will persuade Canadian customers to give its new service a chance.
“We do offer a enormous catalog of books, so for most people there will be more options for books, we also support a broader range of reading devices,” Dougall added.
“We have every major publisher in Canada on our roster and a lot of very small Canadian publishers too. We are very aggressive about finding every single book that we can find,” he stated.
To buy a Google book, you go to http://books.google.ca/ebooks.