Comments on: One year in, Google Play store has over 5M ebooks and 18M songs http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/06/one-year-in-google-play-store-has-over-5m-ebooks-and-18m-songs/ The economics of digital content Sat, 18 May 2013 13:29:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Ron Taylor http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/06/one-year-in-google-play-store-has-over-5m-ebooks-and-18m-songs/#comment-201407 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:14:28 +0000 http://paidcontent.org/?p=225566#comment-201407 Their site has to be one of the worst designs in the history of the internet.

They are the last place I would look for an ebook and will never publish there.

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]]> By: g2-2551367392025d285ab2f59c9e7753fd http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/06/one-year-in-google-play-store-has-over-5m-ebooks-and-18m-songs/#comment-201394 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 15:49:24 +0000 http://paidcontent.org/?p=225566#comment-201394 Play Books is undoubtedly hurt by the limitations of the Books app. I for one do not use it at all, because it has no ability to import/sideload my existing (DRM-free) books (!). Useless.

Since I’m not using their app, their store is not the one that springs to mind when I’m looking to purchase a new book. Fail. Why are they treating books so differently than music?

]]> By: Karen Myers http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/06/one-year-in-google-play-store-has-over-5m-ebooks-and-18m-songs/#comment-201385 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:23:31 +0000 http://paidcontent.org/?p=225566#comment-201385 The process for an author to add books to Google Play, which goes through the Google Books program, is unbelievably difficult, to the point where I would describe it as publisher-hostile, esp. for indies.

Aside from one’s philosophical issues with Google Books and copyright, the fact that customer service is unresponsive, that there is no place to enter book descriptions or metadata (or ability to fix what they screen scrape from other sources), and that they discount without permission, has finally made me pull the plug on the whole channel, the only channel I’ve every had to do that with.

Google Play — NOT recommended for indie authors.

]]> By: bob http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/06/one-year-in-google-play-store-has-over-5m-ebooks-and-18m-songs/#comment-201380 Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:16:58 +0000 http://paidcontent.org/?p=225566#comment-201380 Numbers don’t tell the whole story. Google has offended the working artist by steamrolling over the writers with their Book project. They could have asked permission but they chose to digitize everything. Now they can’t even settle the law suit with all of their billions.

Until they fix their anti-artist ways, they’ll always have a second tier store filled with cast offs.

]]> By: Paolo Amoroso http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/06/one-year-in-google-play-store-has-over-5m-ebooks-and-18m-songs/#comment-201361 Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:25:38 +0000 http://paidcontent.org/?p=225566#comment-201361 My experience confirms that the selection of books at Google Play Books is pretty limited. Only 8 out of the 53 ebooks I bought at Amazon over the past three years are also available at Play Books. I wrote a little more about this here:

Google Play Books: the world largest selection of ebooks?
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115447412616529141867/posts/EE87Gd2nXu5

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