Sunday, September 20, 2009

How to Grow a Digital Repository

Some do it openly scan and ask questions later, others walk the streets and cut the commercial deals to acquire files, some go after print on demand files and now Amazon appears to have found another trick to grow a digital repository by stealth.

The announcement this last week that Amazon is looking for all new titles to be placed in their 'Search Inside The Book' (SITB) program some weeks before publication would on the surface appear sensible and one to pursue. After all it would let the consumer see and sample the book ahead of publication and also increase the probability that the correct sample is there on the day of release. So why would it raise our eyebrows?

Well to Search inside the Book would be asking all publishers to upload the PDF of the title. Not part of the book but the book and probably a full text searchable PDF which they should have at that stage. That is principle is a heartbeat away from an ebook in many flavours and why not let Amazon convert it to a full ebook for free as part of the deal. Obviously the rendition of the digital ebook would be effectively exclusive to Amazon and other swould have to pay to convert it again but Amazon could kill two birds with one stone and get ebooks available on the release date and also get marketing usage of them in advance of publication.

Now we may well be jumping the gun and making two and two equal 5 but it certainly makes a lot of sense to us.

1 comment:

Dave C. said...

For the publishers I'm familiar with, Amazon already gets eBooks 3 weeks before the print publication date.