Amazon, University of Michigan in big book-printing deal

Amazon.com is pushing deeper into the academic book market. The online retail giant will do on-demand reprints of some 400,000 out-of-copyright books from the University of Michigan library, in a deal announced today. Amazon has been actively targeting academia, trying to convince universities to adopt the Kindle DX as a textbook replacement and outsource reprints of older academic titles to its print-on-demand service, BookSurge.

Interestingly, many of the 400,000 book titles the University of Michigan is making available for reprints by Amazon were digitized by Google as part of its massive book-scanning project. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has criticized Google's book settlement with authors and publishers, saying "it doesn't seem right that you should get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights." The University of Michigan specifies that the reprint deal with Amazon covers out-of-copyright books, which may be an important distinction, given that Google faces continuing questions about "orphan" books whose rights holders cannot be found.

Google, for its part, recently signaled it plans to let publishers sell new-release books through its search engine, which would be a direct shot at Amazon's Kindle business.

Amazon has been working to interest universities in its BookSurge print-on-demand service, which gives universities a way to derive some incremental revenue from slow-selling or out-of-print books (The University of Washington has also dabbled with BookSurge). The University of Michigan says its reprinted books will cost $10 to $45. At best, a reprint bestseller "might sell 100 copies," driven by some topical event, for example, an election campaign creating interest in older political texts, according to U-M.

[Flickr photo via C G-K]

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About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

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