Google to sell books to be read only online

— -- Google's next frontier: selling books to read online.

The online search giant's $125 million settlement with book publishers paves the way for a new business for Google, authors and publishers: selling books that can only be read on your computer.

"Call me weird, but I think there are a lot of advantages to reading books online," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in an interview Tuesday. "You don't have to look at it at a funny angle, and today's monitors have better resolution than ever."

Nearly four years ago Google began scanning out-of-print books to add to its online index, saying it would offer parts of the book in searches. Publishers responded with a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Google's Book Search project expanded, adding portions of in-print books to the index with links to buy them. Google has digitized 7 million books to date.

"We would have remained unhappy about the scanning, but for this deal," says Paul Aiken, executive director of the Author's Guild. By Google's agreeing to pay authors and publishers, and to work out a revenue share for future sales, "We're thrilled," says Aiken.

The settlement awaits approval by the court, expected in mid-2009, when the venture will begin. Meanwhile, Google is setting up an online registry for authors. (Authors will set prices and pocket a little more than 50% of the sale, Google says.)

Brin says he often reads books on his computer. Reading in bed under a lamp is cool, "but frankly, there's a lot to be said for efficiently buying a book online and not having to wait for it to arrive."

Danny Sullivan, editor of the SearchEngineLand blog, says the settlement shows a mature Google. "Google came from this place where they could just go index everything without asking anyone's permission."

Coming to terms with publishers paves the way for other settlements, Sullivan says, perhaps, for instance, with Comedy Central owner Viacom, which has a pending $1 billion lawsuit against Google's YouTube.