USA Bookstores who use the IndieCommerce digital system to facilitate the sales of Google eBooks will no longer be able to sell them anymore. Starting January 31st the entire Google eBooks catalog, will be removed from all reseller sites, but existing customers can access their past purchases from their Google account or the IndieBound Reader software.
The American Booksellers Association is gravitating their entire online eBook solutions over to Kobo. The one great thing about this new system is that it is not bound exclusively to the IndieCommerce stores, as Google was. It’s for any store with a web presence that wants to sell e-books, and it offers the option of selling e-readers in their bookstores or online.
There is extensive documentation for stores looking for a new digital system to make the switch fairly easy. Many bookstores are already enjoying success with the Kobo platform because they generate consistent revalue from the sale of eBooks. If customers purchase an e-reader from your store and register their account online, the store itself gets a cut out of every single book that customer purchases. Kobo is one of the only companies to abide by this principle, which is why many big box retailers ditched Amazon e-readers.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
