I can see the uses for Google books. It may be that students could go on to it to research an author, find a book and read a preview to see if they like it before they borrow it. I wonder though how useful it will be if only a portion of the books listed have read previews. If children can see the book and read part of it online will that make them keener to borrow the real thing? Do Microsoft and Google serve the same purpose?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It's a good question you raise. I've read a few articles which have found that making portions available online make users more likely to download them. It's interesting the way that the music downloading industry differs from the ebook downloading industry - not quite as much piracy goes on with the ebook end of things but it isn't nearly as huge as the music industry. I also read another story (I think it may've even been O'Reilly) in which sales increased when they made their ebooks available for purchase without any restrictions (like those currently in place which limit which devices you can use to view them on). There were a lot of incidents of piracy, of course, but it didn't decline sales at all. Interesting!
ReplyDelete