Google Editions, Google's new online e-book-selling service, will launch next year, the company announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair today.

In addition to Google itself, publishers and booksellers will be able to use Google Editions to sell books to the general public. In July, at a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy said that bricks-and-mortars book stores are key parts of the literary eco-system and that Google wants to enable them to partake in online bookselling.

Google Editions will start with about 400,000 to 600,000 books, in the first half of the year. Publishers will set the books' price.

Unlike other e-book sellers which are pairing up with dedicated e-readers (like Amazon and the Kindle), Google Editions will be agnostic as to devices. Google's vision is to enable buyers to read the books on any electronic devices, not just e-readers, but smart phones, computers, and other devices.

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