Prompt's TechBlog
Amazon to sell book chapters
04 November 2005
Posted by Sean McManusGiven the expense and breadth of many technical books today, this could grow the market by enabling those who wouldn't buy a whole book to buy just the bits they need. It might also be a good way for book buyers to sample a book before deciding whether to splash out on the full tome. And if, like me, you start reading many more novels than you finish, being able to buy them chapter by chapter should save money and clutter.
For technology books, Amazon will be competing with Safari, which provides the full text of 3000 computer books to its subscribers. Amazon will need to make the price of chapters attractive - so far ebooks haven't been priced much below paper books, which has limited their appeal to books that people want to read immediately.
Comments:
How interesting! Especially in light of other tech-lit stories abounding this week. I noticed that Google is still wrestling with The Association of American Publishers (AAP) over plans to build a Print Library by scanning millions of books from five libraries. Google wants to digitise them, index them, and post handy searchable versions of them online. I thought this wrangle was done and dusted months ago! Also, and perhaps a little more legit, I read that Microsoft and the British Library had joined forces to make 100,000 titles available online as part of another book search service. Personally I love reading some things on the Web, AND some things in handy, crushable old paperbacks, but then the Web was all fields when I was a lad…
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