Book publishers have reason to rejoice at the news that Google is about to enter the ebook market. According to Google, it will let the publishers decide the price at which they would like to sell the electronic versions of their books through Google. Right now Amazon dominates the ebook market in the US. It sells ebooks at a rate of $9.99 (less than half the average cost of a hard copy) which users can read with the help of the Kindle reader, which is also manufactured and sold by Amazon.

Amazon sells the kindle for a hefty $359. Only available in the US, the Kindle is already a hit with sales reaching about 2 million units. Amazon also has presently a collection of more than 285,000 books which can be bought and downloaded onto kindle. With only one dominant company in the market, consumers as well as publishers have limited options. Outside the US however Sony has its own Reader priced at $299. Fujitsu will also enter the market in fall this year with its currently named FLEPia ebook reader.

With its decision to sell ebooks, Google has taken a second major step in recent months to take over this market. In March this year, it entered into a partnership with Sony, according to which, Google will make available about half a million of 7 million books that it has scanned, for users to download onto the Sony reader. (These half million books have expired copyrights) The rest of the scanned books might also be available on the Sony reader once Google sorts out the copyright issues with the writers and publishers. When this is done, Google will definitely be much ahead of Amazon in the number of available ebooks for download.

However for now, Google intends to launch a new program which will directly allow users to download latest ebooks through Google. And with the price rights in the hands of publishers, it is possible that publishers might move away from Amazon to Google where they can sell the electronic version of their latest publications at more than the present $9.99. (Though the consumers might have to pay more for their ebooks than what they are paying now, the price of an ebook should definitely stay lower than the actual hard copy. I doubt if anyone would go for an ebook when the hard copy is also available for more or less the same price.)

Also the ebooks sold through Google will have one advantage. According to company executives, Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones. This would eliminate the need of costly ebook readers like the Kindle and even the Sony Reader. It seems that Google’s program will therefore affect the entire ebook reader industry. A drop in the price of the readers seems one of the most obvious moves. It remains to be seen how the fight will actually shape up.

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