Google Editions Is Ready... For Publishers

Mr. Grave received an email from the folks at Google Editions which stated:

"Our team is working hard on preparations for the upcoming launch of Google Editions, allowing Google Books Partners to sell digital access to their content with Google.

As part of this work, we’re happy to announce that it is now possible to submit ePub files through your Google Books Partner Program account. ePub is an open-standard file format for digital books. ePub files are not required for Google Editions, but they allow us to offer a reflowable text experience for users on mobile phones or other devices with small screens.

We encourage you to submit your ePub files by August 6 so we can work to make them available at the public launch later this year. Simply follow the steps outlined here to submit them: https://books.google.com/support/partner/bin/answer.py?answer=170425 . "


There are a few other items in the email but a few cautionary bits we've thought about here if you're thinking about using this service.  First, there is a DRM (digital rights management) system Google Editions has for its titles.  Secondly, the Google Editions options page has a yes/no setting for "Allow buyers to copy/paste and print without restriction".   No system is foolproof, but I would highly recommend using these functions unless you are planning on giving your title away for free.  We bring this up, because the option is not very easily seen and the defaults on both were set to "On" for our titles.  Finally, thanks Google for giving us a week deadline for submissions when you can't give us a firm launch date.....

There was also a section about PDFs in the email we'll get to in tomorrow's blog posting. Stay tuned, I'm sure there will be more cautionary tales about Google Editions to come...