Browse Inside this book

I just came across this while desperately trying not to start work this morning, thanks to Stumbleupon.

The complete text of Neil Gaiman’s bestselling novel American Gods is available to read online thanks to Harper Collins’ Browse Inside service. This service provides online access to a total of 500 books, enabling you to read any part of them prior to purchasing.

There is no download option, of course, simply online reading in your browser. I guess this is no different to being sat in the comfy sofa of a bookshop perusing your potential purchases as the online reading experience is going to make it a challenge to get through the entire book - but by no means impossible.

This is an interesting move for a major publisher and I’ll bet there are armies of suits in the halls of Harper Collins suffering sleepless nights over the idea of making stuff available for free on the internet. They know full well, however, that th enumer of people who will use this service for anything more than a pre-sale taster is extremely low, so it acts as a promotional piece rather than an alternative to buying.

Once again, great to see the big publishers testing the online world.

Adobe began the rise in popularity of ebooks when their Acrobat file format allowed true cross platform access to electronic books. But it has still taken many years of re-educating the reading public to start an acceleration of the ebook as a viable means of distribution for an author and publisher. Now, with the release of the ugly yet admittedly useful and (mostly) usable Amazon Kindle, are we going to see 2008 the year of the ebook?

Elements of the publishing industry are starting to think so.

David Roth-Ey, director of audio and e-books at Harper Collins, was recently quoted in The Bookseller as enthusiastic about the growth of ebooks - one could argue his job depends on it - and is quoted as stating

“we are closer to the iPod moment for e-books than ever before”

Let’s ignore for a moment his confusion between the iPod, a device, and the ebook, the content. But just because there are more devices out there right now, does not mean an explosion of the marketplace. Price point of the ebook readers is a key factor in inhibiting , and geographical accessibility (don’t live in Montana), book choice, and user experience are all going to block the take-up beyond the geeky book reader who wants the latest gadget.

Much has been said of the shortcomings of the Kindle, but it has brought the idea of electronic books to far more people than previously. Where we believe the Kindle went wrong - aside from it’s obstructive and button positioning looks - is the pricing model for the user, where reading matter that is freely available, such as blogs, costs money to read due to the need to access via wifi and a specific network. This confuses the users, and a device where free services remain free with the added bonus of electronic literature would be a much more profitable fit.

We suggest a completely different model, however. Consider the mobile phone industry where the cost of the handset is subsidised by the ongoing user subscription. This could be combined with a set number of free books per month as part of the subscription, the number being dependent on the level of subscription. Transfer that model to the Kindle and you have a number of distinct advantages:

• Far more units in people’s hands
• Guaranteed income over the length of the contract
• More books being read - partly down to the subscription model providing additional motivation for the Kindle user to download and read the books they have committed to paying for within the contract
• An accelerated growth in ebook acceptance and the ebook marketplace as a whole

if:book also suggests a subscription model in a post here.
It always takes time for a lethargic and often archaic industry to move enough cogs in the right directions to change the way they look at their product and how to get them in the eyes of customers, so what we feel as a number of steps down the wrong road right now, is inevitable. We hope that there is not too much resistance within the industry as a whole to enforce the old system onto a new one purely because the suits refuse to accept that the world is changing.