SAN FRANCISCO--An initiative in the works from the nonprofit Internet Archive to centralize the electronic distribution of commercially viable books could upend the publishing industry and declaw Amazon.com, an industry analyst said.
On Monday, the Internet Archive, which among other things has been working for some time to digitize countless numbers of public domain texts, showed the first public look at its BookServer project, an initiative its dubs, "The future of books."
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told CNET News that BookServer is about creating an open system that allows search engines to index books that are available from a wide group of sources. Effectively, commercial publishers, lending libraries and even individual authors would have a way to index their work and offer easy digital distribution under BookServer, Kahle said.
Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, on Monday unveiled an initiative called BookServer, aimed at making all books availble for digital distribution.
(Credit: Internet Archive) Kahle's timing is interesting. Also on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported details on Barnes & Noble's $259 e-reader called the Nook, which will compete with Amazon's Kindle and Sony's E-Reader, a move which heats up the market. More interesting may be Google's announcement last week of its "Google Editions" store, an initiative aimed at offering digital editions of books from publishers with which it already has distribution deals. Google said that should mean about a half-million books would be available initially, either through Google itself, or through sites like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
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