“Publishers look set to win the latest round in the battle for supremacy on electronic books, with Google ready to offer major concessions as it prepares to enter the increasingly competitive e-book market,” reports a Times of London story. “Following the unveiling of Apple’s iPad, which will feature an electronic bookstore when it launches next month, and Amazon’s humiliation last week by a book publisher in a prices row, Google is thought to have given in to the book industry by offering it a higher share of the sale of e-books.”

Preparing to launch its ebook store, Google Editions, the report says,

Google’s opening gambit in the ongoing negotiations was to give publishers a cut of 63 to 66 per cent of the retail price of a book. Google would take the rest, and would have control of setting the price for titles. Google also wanted to allow customers to print out books they had bought, and allow anyone to cut and paste segments of them. But recent events have emboldened publishers to push for a better deal, and it is believed Google has backed down. The internet firm is now thought to be offering a 70 per cent cut of sales and allowing publishers to set the price.

… It is believed that allowing buyers to print copies from Google Editions, or allowing the copying and pasting of extracts, is also now off the table.

… Though the move means only that Google is offering a slightly higher percentage of book sales, analysts believe that the shift could be worth millions, if not tens of millions, in future revenues for publishers.