SITKA, ALASKA
The first thing you might see when you walk into Old Harbor Books in rainy Sitka is a wrinkled paper sign which declares in capital letters, “PLEASE DON’T DRIP ON THE BOOKS.”

As of this week, it could just as easily say “Don’t drip on your e-reader.”

That’s because the store now sells Google eBooks. The electronic books are readable on any device with a web-browser – no need to spend a hundred dollars or more for a special handheld reader – and more importantly for Don Muller, one of the store’s co-founders, Google lets independent bookstores like this one make money.

“It gives us a way to compete in this growing e-book industry and to compete with Amazon finally,” he said.

The giant online bookseller Amazon owns the popular Kindle e-reader, a tablet-sized device that only accepts books purchased from Amazon directly. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

When Kindle and devices like it became popular, Muller says independent bookstores like Old Harbor felt it at the cash register. Industry predictions were that a store like Old Harbor could lose 10 percent of its business to the e-books, but Muller says the impact has been deeper than that and is still growing.

Selling Google e-books, he says, could help make up some ground.

“It may be too late for independent book stores and it may be too late for dead-tree books at a level that supports independent bookstores,” Muller said. “But this is a very good step forward in that battle with Amazon.”

And Matt Supko, technology director for the American Booksellers Association, agrees.

“I think our members are very interested now in the opportunities that are out there with e-books,” he said by phone from the Association's headquarters in Tarrytown, N.Y.

The ABA represents about 1,600 independent book stores in the U.S. and Canada, including 11 in Alaska.

“In most cases, for most popular titles, our member stores are going to be selling their Google eBooks at the same price as Amazon and Barnes & Noble and other retailers like that,” Supko said. “So certainly on the price front there are opportunities for us that there haven’t been for some time.”

Google says under its e-book system, retailers and publishers get the lion’s share of the money. A spokeswoman for Google says the company can’t get more specific.

Back in Sitka, Muller says the cut is smaller than what Old Harbor would get for a hard copy sale of the same book, but only because hard copy books go for more money.

“It’s better than nothing at all, and the money that does come to us, comes to Sitka, comes to the community,” Muller said. “It’s a way of shopping locally for people in Sitka who still want to have an e-book and use that format.”

Muller works part-time at the store after years as its manager and he’s seen a lot of change in the book industry. Selling e-books is just the latest, and Muller says doing it Google’s way could help stores like Old Harbor Books to keep turning a profit as more and more people begin turning electronic pages.
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