You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Google has launched its e-book store in Canada, with the regional arms of Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin and Simon & Schuster signing up to the digital service.
The publishers join Canadian houses such as D&M Publishers, House of Anansi Press, McClelland & Stewart and Dundurn Press.
The e-book store launched in the United States in December 2010 and in the UK early last month. Scott Dougall, director of product management for Google Books, said there were a number of factors behind the international roll-out. He said: "Google is used to rolling out globally platforms that are free and available to everyone, but once you start rolling out a platform where you are selling paid goods, there’s a lot more legal requirements to conform to. There’s territorial rights, there’s copyright rules, there’s tax rules and tax rules meant that there are legal rules about what we display on the receipts and how we communicate with our users.”
Similar to Google's partnerships with the American Booksellers Association, and Gardners' Hive in the UK, the digital company has teamed up with some independent bookstores for them to sell e-books online. Dougall told Publishers Weekly: "Our desire is to have a good presence with local book retailers."
Discussions are ongoing with other Canadian publishers in order to bring more digital titles to the store. He said: "We’re out to get every book in the world accessible, so if you see that we’ve missed a book so far and it’s on a list somewhere, someone’s going to be going after it.”