Google eBooks is coming to Canada

In March 2011 Google announced its intention to launch Google eBooks in Canada in the near future.

This is a significant new channel of distribution for Canadian publishers, and it provides us with a good way of demonstrating the value of QuickStart.
Google has recently circulated this set of instructions to publishers interested in contributing titles to the service. Here’s a summary of the steps they outline:

Google Instructions With QuickStart Gather a list of titles for which you hold the digital rights. The metadata is on the system ready to send to any vendor. Use a spreadsheet to compile the relevant settings for the books you plan to sell as Google eBooks. Your DRM preferences are pre-loaded; each vendor’s metadata format is pre-set. Upload high-quality PDFs for all books you intend to sell, if available. Set up the Google ftp parameters once, and upload easily. If you have ePub files for the books, make sure they meet our specifications and get ready to upload them when this feature is available in your account. All epub produced by codeMantra are guaranteed to meet the specifications of Google and dozens of other distributors. Add books to the Google Books Partner Program that are not available yet. Business rules can be set up to automatically send new titles to specified distributors as they are loaded on the system.

The good news is that the process is substantially the same for all distributors. The bad news is that each has its own peculiar requirements; metadata templates vary, Apple's epub requirements are a little different from Amazon's; Overdrive's DRM requirements are more stringent than ebrary's.

But with QuickStart, once you've set up your metadata and files* in the system, you can set them to any distributor with a 5-minute setup. Today Google, tomorrow the world.

* If codeMantra has created your epub and PDF, we guarantee successful delivery to any distributor.