"authors will take distribution into their own hands and sidestep publishers altogether, using platforms such as the ones offered by Apple and Google to go directly to readers"

While reading an article in the Delimiter, an Australian technology news source, written by Renai LeMay (owner) I discovered the "book ecosystem concept"... which simply takes you from author, to publisher, to digital platform and retailer...hopefully in one seamless swell swoop! LeMay explains how Google is trying to connect the points in this ecosystem with their eBookstore. The Google eBookstore is currently only available in the U.S. but will be opening in Australia next and going global soon.

Google's eBook executive and point man in Australia is Mark Tanner (pictured).

Here then is 'The eBook Executive with the Google Tattoo' by Renai LeMay:

When you ask Google’s Mark Tanner what books he’s been reading recently, you had better have a few minutes to discuss the subject, because the enthusiasm bursts out of him wholesale. “I just finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut,” he says, referring to the science fiction classic. “Fantastic read.”

Lots of people in Australia’s IT industry are into sci-fi — and we’re betting many Google staffers love fantasy too. But sports books are also on Tanner’s radar. He’s also been recently reading Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open, for example, which chronicles the life and times of the international tennis megastar. And then there’s Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea — an inspirational read which tells of the author’s gargantuan yet human effort constructing schools across Asia.

Hard science is also on Tanner’s shelf; “I started reading A Brief History of Time,” he says, referring to the popular book by British physicist Stephen Hawking, “and like everyone else failed by the sixth chapter”. Now he’s reading Hawking’s follow-up book A Briefer History of Time.

In a way, you might say, Tanner’s a typical book buff — multiple books on the go, in multiple genres, some unfinished, a giant set of bookcases at home with volumes gathering dust and piled everywhere. However, Tanner’s not just any book industry executive — he’s Google’s strategic partner development manager in Australia for the publishing industry. And so it’s the way he has increasingly started reading books that gives us a clue into the future of book publishing.


For example, when the executive was reading Agassi’s autobiography, he says, he wasn’t just flipping through the pages of a paper tome. Instead — because he was reading the book through a web browser — he kept on taking advantages of the inherent strengths of the emerging digital medium.

“You’re reading online, and then you come across this match he talks about,” he says. Then, Tanner says, you open a new tab in your browser and Google the match Agassi’s describing, to find a YouTube clip of the highlights. Or, he adds, “you come across an old tennis player you haven’t heard of” — and Google them.

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