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Amazon’s just-announced program to sell book
content on a component or “pay-per-view” basis is
the latest in a series of events moving books at last
into the digital content business. “Amazon Pages” is
a new service enabling customers to buy parts of
books – sections, chapters, and individual pages –
just as iTunes lets consumers buy individual songs
rather than an entire music album. Immediate uses
of the service could be in selling portions of travel
books, home and auto repair books, and cookbooks.
Business and professional users also could benefit by
being able to discover relevant nuggets of content
that heretofore were hidden inside of books. The
ability to buy selected parts of books also might be
attractive to students, much as has already been
seen via Amazon’s e-docs program, where selected
educational publishers have reconstituted book
chapters into study guides.
Pricing is not yet disclosed, although Random House
announced its own program for selling book content
at 5 to 25 cents per page. Google is working with
publishers on a similar initiative. Publishers have
reacted favorably to Amazon’s plans, and for good
reason. While books are a rich source of content,
users cannot easily find relevant content that may
be hidden inside of an entire work. The availability of
free content on the internet threatens the book
market, so giving consumers more choice makes
sense defensively. And if history is a guide,
publishers are likely to make more money by letting
users buy what they want. At a time when
publishers are concerned about the protection of
their intellectual property online, Amazon has been
careful to make its program both voluntary and non-
exclusive, while giving publishers control over the
pricing of their digital content.
While component or pay-per-view models long have
been discussed in the book industry, Amazon’s move
is significant for several reasons. First, Amazon’s
backing (and soon Google’s) provides a strong
marketing channel for bringing the concept to millions
of potential users. With its e-commerce systems,
Amazon is in a strong position to create an easy
buying experience. While Google is much less
experienced in e-commerce, it, too, is well-positioned
by virtue of its dominance as a search engine.
Second, by providing a searchable database of
content from many books, Amazon is transforming
the very utility of book content. One of the main
reasons that eBooks have failed is that they put print
books into electronic containers without giving users
any ability to search across them to discover
unknown content. Finally, Amazon’s move
emphasizes the value of paid content on the internet
where many consumers still regard content as largely
free.
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