While I was floating about reading blogs today I picked up a few more really well put articles on this topic and it would be unfair not to share them.

One of the best is by Medialoper who I read for the first time today and was very impressed by. Read the most relevant post here or visit the homepage and browse (Well worth it).

Another excellent one is from Booksquare and in fact involves a series of articles on the topic and all are worth reading I’ll link to a search on the topic and their homepage.

It seems that GBS is opening up a lot of debate. Not a bad thing to my mind. I only hope that it generates some thought and deep thought at that on how the industry moves forward.

One of the most interesting recent developments in terms of Publishing and its relationship with the internet is Google Print (now renamed Google Book Search).

Publishers and authors seem intent on re-running the recent wars that the music industry and currently the movie business are fighting over online content. Sites like iTunes shows that music can be sold legitimately and easily (not to mention profitably) online, taking full account of intellectual property rights and copyright though, to my mind, treating the consumers fair use right a little cavalierly. Such sites show that consumers would rather use safe and reliable legal sites than mess about with unknown and unreliable sites.

Google Book Search opens so many possibilities to book publishers, book sellers and book readers that the antagonistic reaction seems foolish. True the approach by Google itself seems to have been less than diplomatic and a more open and flexible style would have made discussions easier but even allowing for that Google still offers massive potential.

Amazon.com has shown the power for selling that can be harnessed through an online presence. Combining the quality of Google’s search capacity with an Amazon type selling platform would be exceptional news for publishers. Concerns over rights can be ironed out as the project advances.

The possibility of having a publisher’s website linked to search results which include its titles offers searchers the ability to seamlessly purchase once they find the book they desire. Publishers can undercut the prices offered by Amazon and other booksellers (if they cannot then there is something wrong with their business model) so why should they not benefit from that linkage and make extra sales.

Authors are one of the groups most worried by the potential of Google Book Search. If anything despite the challanges of adapting to an online era such platforms as this can offer authors wider choice. Small Press outfits and independent book publishers will have as much opportunity to get their books into the search database opening up a wider market and building bigger sales, if they exploit the opportunity properly.