Independent bookstores selling Google E-Books

[beatrice_otter]

Independent Bookstores Selling Google E-Books.  So you can support your local store--and community!--while still getting the ebook you want.  The only problem I can see is that Google offers no way to tell which books have DRM.

Comments

[elf]

Wow. I have no idea what that means.

I poked around a bit; 12 of those stores are more-or-less local to me. (I may go visit one or two and ask them how it works.) It looks like their ebooks are the same price as the standard Google ebooks; I'm not seeing any advantage in going to the store instead of the main Google site. Has some disads; the store sites aren't always formatted well for dealing with the ebooks.

The bookstore seems to clearly indicate whether there's a download version or not (Google is blurry about this); all Google books, as far as anyone knows, have DRM.

Check this:
Mercedes Lackey's Fortune's Fool at indie ebookstore: two listings, one that says $4.73 (SKU: MGIBFvCHHEQC), one that says $16.84 (Pp3NsFAKwq8C), both say not available when clicked on.

Same at Googlebookstore, single listing, not available for sale at all.

Google's ebookstore needs some serious work.

[beatrice_otter]

Well, the benefit of going through your local bookstore is ... you're going through your local bookstore. I would rather give money (at least some of it) to a local small business than to a huge national/international corporation; it's a personal preference. I know other people who share that preference, so for us this is a way for at least part of our money to go local rather than national. If you don't care about it, you can buy elsewhere.

And, yeah, Google's bookstore needs lots of work. (Seriously. They're Google. They should be able to afford product testing and a usable interface.)

[elf]

I want to know if the local bookstores will have computer interfaces set up in-store, so people could buy ebooks with their mobile devices on the spot. I wouldn't expect that to be universal, but for some of my local stores, it's a definite possibility. (However. Comes with the hassle of explaining to customers why the damn search offers books that aren't available, which the cashiers certainly won't know.)

I also wonder if the local stores have the right to run sales on those ebooks. That's a huge kettle of worms.

I like the idea of supporting the local bookstores. I won't be, 'cos I don't buy DRM anything, but other people could.

Google books are a *mess* as a commercial product. No clear labeling about what you're getting; no indication whether it's a properly-formatted ebook or a scan with auto-OCR; no mention of DRM details; no mention of copyright licensing-vs-purchase issues, and the listings include a whole bunch of books that aren't available for purchase at all.