There’s a Thunder Bay connection to Google’s entry this week into the crowded Canadian e-book marketplace.
Scott Dougall says his company’s online store will make a mark because of its uniqueness and flexibility. According to the Canadian Press, titles bought by consumers will be stored online and made accessible to a variety of different devices, including Android and Apple tablets, personal computers, smartphones and other e-readers, including the Kobo, Nook and Sony’s Reader.
Essentially everything but Amazon’s Kindle, Dougall said.
“When you buy a Google e-book, you actually get it in an open format – you don’t need to buy a device from us. You can read a Google e-book on any device that supports an open standard,” Dougall, the director of product management for Google Books, told CP on Tuesday.
“You’ll also have access to the Google cloud – so wherever you go, your books will be there and accessible to you.”
The e-book store, launched within the past year in both the United States and United Kingdom, will offer hundreds of thousands of titles for purchase, and more than two million public domain titles for free.
The company has formed partnerships with a number of book-selling giants, including Random House, Penguin, Harper-Collins and a pair of independent Canadian bookstores.
Pricing will be competitive with other online bookstores, though according to CP, other sites showed lower prices for at least two titles, Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist and Guy Vanderhaeghe’s A Good Man.
Dougall, whose father Fraser Dougall owns tbnewswatch.com, said selection and versatility should play in Google’s favour.
“We do offer a massive catalogue of books, so for most people there will be more choice for books. We also support a broader range of reading devices,” Dougall told the news outlet.
“We have every major publisher in Canada and a lot of very small Canadian publishers. We’re very aggressive about finding every single book that we can find.”
