Will Pay Per View be as Poplular as iTunes?

Will Pay Per View be as Poplular as iTunes?

A new paradigm shift is taking place within major publsihers.

It could change the way we access “specific” content within publications.

No need to buy a whole book when you only want one poem or page or chapter.

Random House, the world’s largest trade publisher, has laid out a comprehensive plan to digitize, index and sell book content online. The plan, which will include agreements with a range of online vendors, will be based on per-page micro-payments that could revolutionize the way books are bought and read.

The world’s largest trade publisher will charge websites four cents per page for fiction and narrative nonfiction (a 350-page book would cost $14, for example), ostensibly allowing vendors to determine their own pricing schemes. Other types of content—cookbooks, for example—could cost significantly more. Websites will be responsible for tracking page views and collecting payments from readers, as well as for taking measures to protect against digital piracy. Authors will be allowed to opt out of the “pay-per-page-view” program.

“Given both recent and impending developments in the digital access/content search arena for books, we believe now is the time for Random House, Inc., to clearly set forth our own business model for paid online viewing of the contents of our books,” said Random House president of corporate development Richard Sarnoff in a statement released this afternoon. Sarnoff had been active in negotiations with Google over its library-book scanning project, which broke down when the search giant declined to agree to seek permission for every book it indexed, The Book Standard reported last month.