Great post by Peter Brantley on Publisher’s Weekly about the effect of the popularity of the new Google tablet, Nexus 7. Basically, he points out that Google is a company that endorses EPUB3 and open standards for e-books, such as with metadata, and if the Nexus 7 becomes a bigger player in the e-reading market, this would mean publishers could change their strategies regarding e-book sales.
See the excerpt below:
The dominance of technology in book retailing has deep ramifications for publishers; for example, direct to consumer sales efforts are not likely to generate significant return in general trade, although building strong reader-oriented communities may pay dividends in market intelligence. Most critically, if publishers are invested in an open competitive marketplace for books, they would do well to think about their relations with the dominant companies driving media sales. If I were in their shoes, I would seek strong contractual ties with Google and other companies more likely to parallel my strategic interests, and carefully evaluate more parochial complaints over issues such as price maintenance agreements.
Read the full article on Publisher’s Weekly.
