Google eBooks Officially Launched

Google's long-awaited, long-promised ebook service begins rolling out today in the United States, unveiled in a blog post by product manager Abe Murray, leaving behind its pre-release moniker of Google Editions and now known simply as Google eBooks--one sign of how the world has changed since the web giant first started discussing selling "perpetual online access" to books in 2006. As previously indicated by the company, they expect to launch in other territories in early 2011. The new ebookstore is located at books.google.com/ebooks, but it is launching "throughout the day," so we are advised that not all visitors will necessarily see the new store right away. Similarly, the apps, web reader and reseller ebookstores--all described further below--will start to appear today, though the precise timing is unclear.

Google declares they have "the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than 3 million titles," including "hundreds of thousands of books for sale from publishers" as well as "millions" of public domain titles, with the latter provided for free. People familiar with the catalog estimate the copyrighted works at between 300,000 and 400,000 titles, though Google is not providing a specific number.

While the reviews will come later, in its scope, scale and ambition the program clearly puts Google in contention as a major ebooks player here in the US and shortly in major markets around the world. Google executive Tom Turvey says they are "hoping to capture the full breadth of the book business" with a catalog that incorporates trade books as well as STM, scholarly and professional works. The starting collection also reflects "international diversity," with "multiple languages represented." They are offering both reflowable EPUB files, as well image-based files (when provided by publishers) with a toggle that will show such books--including color titles--"as they exist in print." Turvey underscores, as publishing people will appreciate, that "it's actually meaningful to see how the book was intended to be laid out."

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Amazon To Publish Short Writing

Word comes from Amazon that it's looking once again at publishing writing that is shorter than conventional books. Here's the corporate press release:

Less than 10,000 words or more than 50,000: that is the choice writers have generally faced for more than a century--works either had to be short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the "heft" required for book marketing and distribution. But in many cases, 10,000 to 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages) might be the perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea, well researched, well argued and well illustrated--whether it's a business lesson, a political point of view, a scientific argument, or a beautifully crafted essay on a current event.

Today, Amazon is announcing that it will launch "Kindle Singles"--Kindle books that are twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book. Kindle Singles will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced much less than a typical book. Today's announcement is a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world.

"Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format," said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content. "With Kindle Singles, we're reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we're excited to see what they create."

Like all Kindle content, Kindle Singles will be "Buy Once, Read Everywhere"--customers will be able to read them on Kindle, Kindle 3G, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, and Android-based devices. Amazon's Whispersync technology syncs your place across devices, so you can pick up where you left off. In addition, with the Kindle Worry-Free Archive, Kindle Singles will be automatically backed up online in your Kindle library on Amazon where they can be re-downloaded wirelessly for free, anytime.

To be considered for Kindle Singles, interested parties should contact digital-publications@amazon.com.

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Oh, the (One Million) Books They Published!

Bowker, the company that keeps statistics on such things, compiled information from its Books-in-Print database and recently announced that conventional publishing produced 288,355 titles in 2009 - and print-on-demand services produced 764,448 titles. That's more than a million titles published last year. Was your book among them?

Conventional (non-POD or subsidy) publishers published 45,000 novels, 32,300 children's books, 19,300 religion titles, 15,400 science titles, and 26,000 economics titles.

Three companies--BiblioBazaar, Books LLC, and Kessinger Publishing--published nearly 700,000 titles (mostly reprints of copyright-free books).

The top POD publishers were CreateSpace (21,819 titles), Lulu.com (10,386 titles), Xlibris (10,161), AuthorHouse (9,445 titles), and PublishAmerica (5,689 titles). Since many of these companies are not exclusive publishers, it's possible at least some of these titles were duplicates.

The question you're left to face, then, is this: Why didn't you publish a book last year?

The answer: You're too smart (i.e., informed, educated, frightened, experienced) to publish with a user/loser such as PublishAmerica. And you simply weren't in the right place at the right time to pitch your work to a conventional publisher.

Right place? Right time? Let's take a look at what literary agent Faye Swetky has to say about that.

"Getting a book published by a conventional publisher involves several things. One is subject matter. It has to be marketable. Two is timing. The market must be anticipated for the time in which your book comes out. Three is compatibility. You have to hit the right editor at the right time in order to get that editor to commit. Three months earlier, three months later, it could be a totally different story. But right on the button? SALE!"

Is it fair? Are you kidding! Is it just? Right. So why are you still in the business of writing?

You know the answer to that better than I do.

After all, I'm just a writer.

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New No-Yard Gardening Book Gets Big Librarian Boost

Here's a look at what the influential Consortium Librarian Express had to say about one of its select April 2010 new-book pitches:

Featured Titles

From Container to Kitchen by D. J. Herda

More and more people are recognizing the need for nutritious, local, sustainable food, but organic options can be costly and the produce in most supermarkets is anything but local. In From Container to Kitchen, D.J. Herda shows that there is a way for urban dwellers to enjoy the benefits of traditional gardening and, for those even without yards, to maximize the harvest of fresh, healthy edibles. Herda is an award-winning freelance author, editor, and photojournalist who has written several thousand articles and more than eighty books. He is an avid organic gardener and test grower.

From Container to Kitchen | D.J. Herda | New Society Publishers | Gardening | 9780865716650 | April 2010 | $19.95 | Trade Paper

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