Amazon to sell book chapters

[r988]

bbc said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4 Amazon to sell chapters of books Amazon will allow customers to buy only what they want in a book Online retailer Amazon.com has unveiled "two innovative programmes" to allow readers to access parts of books rather than buying the complete work. It says Amazon Pages will let customers purchase online "just the pages needed" be it a section or chapter, while still offering the whole book up for sale. And a second scheme, called Amazon Upgrade, will also allow online access to those buying a hard copy of a book. Last week Amazon said it faced a bleak holiday period of slowing sales growth. 'Unusual flexibility' Amazon said the new programmes build on technology which allows customers to search inside a book before buying it, and should help make books available at "any time and any where". Its new schemes come as internet search Google announced the launch of a virtual library, allowing online access to millions of "public access" books from major libraries. Text of these works - which are out of copyright - are being put online by the search giant's digitisation project. The text will be searchable and users will be able to save images of pages. Meanwhile, announcing its Pages scheme, Amazon.com said it would allow people to buy only the relevant bits they needed from books. "Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade leverage Amazon's existing Search Inside the Book technology to give customers unusual flexibility in how they buy and read books," said Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com.

At first this seems like a dumb idea, why would you only want a book chapter? But then if you think about a reference book or something of that nature then suddenly it makes more sense. I have on occaision thought about buying a book or bought a book merely for one or two specific chapters, so I think this could be quite useful and money saving (or in fact money spending as people might be tempted to buy more stuff).

[Jaglover]

Interesting idea

It does make sense for reference books I suppose.

What I find far more interesting is the proposal that you can browse through a book before buying.

[mybrainhurts]

I'll just have the naughty bits, please......

[yertis]

I'd love to know what technology they're using for this functionality.

[mybrainhurts]

Scissors and Sellotape.......

[2 Smokin Barrels]

The curious incident....

[2 Smokin Barrels]

or just "the dog"?

[mybrainhurts]

Find a dark room and have a lie down, 2SB......

[2 Smokin Barrels]

mybrainhurts said:

Find a dark room and have a lie down, 2SB......

That'll be "Far from the madding..." (I didn't like the last 4 chapters anyways)

[2 Smokin Barrels]

But, there must be several books which start or end with the same words? If you wanted just the first few pages it may even be "the"

[2 Smokin Barrels]

Don't the Famous Five books all start "Five go..."

Now that would be confusing.

[2 Smokin Barrels]

Haynes manuals might be tricky too.

[r988]

2 Smokin Barrels said:

Haynes manuals might be tricky too.

Just get the bit with whichever part of the car is broken at that particular time