Something good from Google for booksellers - this is not a Tui ad (Report from San Jose)

from Lincoln Gould, Booksellers NZ CEO (reporting from San Jose)

Imagine a reader coming into your bookstore with their cell phone linked to Google, buying an e-book, and your bank account is credited with the 30% retail margin for that book.

This is the essence of the Google “cloud” concept outlined today by Daniel Clancy of Google Editions at the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute, attended by 500 booksellers in San Jose, California.

Right now this may be more of a “dream cloud” from Google; there are many problems to solve involving the engineering and even issues around privacy.  But Clancy is hopeful that Google Edition will be able to launch the basic  concept by the middle of this year, even if not all the issues are solved.

Two key principles of the idea is that people should be able to buy e-books online in a physical bookshop and that the reader’s personal library of books be stored in their own private “cloud” on Google, never mind where they have bought their books.

Clancy explained that at the moment readers are faced with buying e-books through different sources and having to access each source whenever they want to refer to a particular book. The “google cloud” would overcome that.

One questioner at the conference raised the issue of censorship and how third parties such as an interfering  government might be able to see what books you have read or reading (the issue Patriot Act of the United States Government with its inherent powers of being able to search personal records was mentioned in this context). Clancy said a person’s library in the cloud could only be accessed using their own personal ID and password, but he added that Google did have to operate according to the laws of the US Government.

Clancy’s lunchtime speech was a fascinating cap to a morning of very interesting sessions ,which included Andrew Weinstein of Ingram Digital discussing latest developments in on–line publishing, and the ABA’s Chief Operating Officer Len Viahos discussing how booksellers can make better use of their website (more on these later).

Read more on Daniel Clancy's presentation here.