Tech Shout!

Its being reported that Google has approached at least one publishing house in a bit to set up its own online book rental service.

First reported on Wall Street Journal, the story goes that Google plans to offer access to an online version of a book for one week for ten per cent of the market price. Downloading or printing the text from the online version of the books would not be allowed.

But the publisher thinks 10 per cent is far too low a fee to charge for the online version of the books. Meanwhile, Amazon.com plans to sell online access to its books in sections as small as one page, the service is called Amazon Pages.

Amazon Pages will probably cost a few cents per page for regular novels and so on, but more for access to reference texts.

If customers return to buy the whole book, they will also have access to a full online version of the text as part of a service named “Amazon Upgrade“.