BBC Article: US Department of Justice objects to Google book plan
US Department of Justice objects to Google book plan (click to read the story at BBC news)
In brief, with regard to their plan to open shop as an ebook publisher, the USDoJ feels that Google is taking a bull-in-the-china-shop approach with regard to copyright law. They’re probably right… negotiations continue.
Going further, Amazon.com feels that Google’s plan might give them a monopoly on the ebook market. Amazon is currently duking it out with publishers over pricing plans, refuting publishers’ claims that $9.99 is too low a price for their products. Their primary argument is that it devalues their publications, and will hurt sales of physical copies of books.
Most of the avid readers that I know prefer books to ebook readers — I don’t think that physical books are going anywhere; however, in our modern age of resource-consciousness and ravenous techno-consumerism, one of the incentives for making the switch to an ebook reader is being able to forgo the ink and paper of traditional media. Publishers win because they have literally NO overhead in the sale — no costs for printing, boxing or shipping.
Their $14.99 price point is based on the Apple model. Apple has long been the highest-priced option in the industry, and Steve Jobs’ smug and insular world view should hardly be considered a model to follow.
Publishers’ assertions that they should rake in the same numbers on book and ebook sales are tantamount to greed and opportunism. The world is changing the way it reads, and publishers need to adapt to the interests of their customers.
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