Google Girds for War in the E-Book Market

TechFlash reports: Google is fleshing out some of the details of its plan to sell digital books online. Google executives speaking at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany said the e-book store, called Google Editions, will launch next year and include between 400,000 and 600,000 titles, according to reports. It's the latest step Google is taking to monetize its massive book-scanning project, which represents a growing challenge to Amazon.com and its own electronic-book push with Kindle.

Amazon's Kindle store currently contains about 350,000 titles. Google's e-book store will presumably include a lot of older titles that make up the bulk of its scanning project. But Google has also made noises about letting publishers sell new books through its platform, which would be a much bigger threat to Amazon, which emphasizes new releases and New York Times bestsellers for Kindle.

Google's efforts could also give boost to the open ePub format, which allows for reading digital books across multiple devices. Google, Sony, and others have embraced ePub, while Amazon has keeps its e-books tethered to Kindle and its associated iPhone app.

Here's how Google executive Tom Turvey described the search giant's revenue share model for its e-book store, according to Reuters:

Turvey said Google would give publishers 63 percent of revenues and keep 37 percent for itself where it sold e-books directly to consumers. In cases where e-books were bought through other online retailers, publishers would get 45 percent, and most of the remaining 55 percent would go to the retailer, with a small share for Google, he said. Readers will be able to access e-books they have bought through Google on any device, including PCs, laptops, netbooks, and smartphones like Apple's iPhone through their gmail account, Google said.

Will Amazon engage with Google on this?

For the moment, the two companies remain at odds. Amazon and a variety of other parties have opposed Google's proposed legal settlement with author and publisher groups, which is currently being revised under court supervision.