From the Inside Google Books Blog:
Retailers, bloggers, book publishers and other website owners in the U.S. can now become Google eBooks affiliates. Affiliates can link to Google eBooks on their sites for any of the hundreds of thousands of titles available for sale, earning a commission for referring sales to the Google eBookstore.
We launched the program as a limited beta in December with our first affiliate, Goodreads. Goodreads is a social reading site, who after becoming an affiliate was able to refer their avid book reading fans to the Google eBookstore. When Goodreads users buy a Google eBook, they’re gaining immediate access to their book and supporting Goodreads in the process.
Starting today, we invite all interested site owners to apply to join the expanded Google eBooks affiliate program. Participating sites gain new revenue streams by giving their book-reading audiences an easy way to buy Google eBooks.
Google eBooks affiliates become part of the Google Affiliate Network (GAN). After joining GAN, you can subscribe to the Google eBooks product feed to get links to the full set of available Google eBooks. If you want to query a more targeted set of ebooks you can use the new Google Books APIs.
For more information and to sign up to be a Google eBooks affiliate, please visit our partner Help Center here.
When the devil are they opening the Google eBookstore in Canada? It’s taking forever. How complicated can it be?
It can be as complicated as the Canadian government wants it to be. The Investment Canada Act protects Canadian authors, publishers, distributors, and booksellers from foreign (American) competition.
It took Amazon just about 10 years and a $20 million donation to get approval to ship books to Canada. Up until about a year ago, Amazon.ca was just a marketing arm for Canada Post.
Apple went in without approval when they opened the iBookstore. The Canadian government started an investigation, and gave Apple approval within a few months. I don’t understand why forgiveness should be so much easier to get than permission.
Hachette began distributing books into Canada from its American warehouse without approval a few years ago. Canada never investigated. In February, Canada’s largest book distributor (H.B. Fenn) went out of business.
I don’t care who it comes from. I just want to buy the book. We aren’t talking about rocket science here. I say get rid of the Investment Canada Act, or at the very least amend it to suit the average Canadian customer; not protect some “wonky” business interest. It’s like CanCon. Why should customers suffer if the musicians can’t compete or aren’t “good” to begin with? Just saying that’s all.
“I say get rid of the Investment Canada Act, or at the very least amend it to suit the average Canadian customer; not protect some “wonky” business interest.”
That’s why Canada is a healthy economy (Davos World Forum labeled it the healthiest) and the American economy is in the tank. Every regulation that protected the American economy and made it great from 1791 to 1970 was because of economic protectionism. Canada is protected its citizens.
You’ve swallowed the free trade and globalization koolaid, and if you live in the USA, like I do, you’re being screwed as I write this. 10 million people lost their jobs because of this. Another 10 million will never work full-time again as long as they live. Another 10 million have given up. All since Sept. 2008.
Thom Hartmann’s show with Ian Fletcher can describe it here:
A Google eBooks affiliate program would be ideal to implement a “Related Books” feature following an article. It would give the user the option to get more in-depth information on a given topic after reading a cursory introduction in an article on the Web.
We still don’t have Google eBooks in Australia, either. Protectionism isn’t doing the Australian publishing and retailing scene any good, especially when we aren’t even allowed to buy Australian authors. It just increases the hard copy sales by Book Depository UK.
As for the iBookstore, I recently paid $14.99 there for a not-so-new title from a popular series. On Amazon it was $6.39, if I’d been “allowed” to buy it.
@Clytie Siddall It really is annoying to see something for a cheaper price and not be able to buy it. Or, to be prevented by geo-restrictions. I really wish someone could straighten out this “unacceptable” state of affairs. Whatever happened to the adage: “Serve the customer” — it seems to have been replaced by: “Serve the corporation”.