"Authors Guild" Skims Half of Google Book-Rights Settlement

Miracle Jones writes "A recent memo from the 'Author's Guild' to the writers and publishers that it supposedly represents shows that only $45 million of the $125 million dollar settlement with Google will be paid to writers, and that the most a writer can receive for a book is $300. Many people speculate that Google's monopoly over all of out-of-copyright works will result in a brutal monopoly that will hurt both writers and readers, and that the 'Author's Guild' had no right to make the deal in the first place. How will it all shake down? Should writers be paid at all for their work? Will Google be any good at the publishing racket?"

Comments

The publishing stranglehold is failing anyway

[einhverfr]

The publishing industry worked very well when the only way you could self-publish was with expensive long offset runs. Nowadays, print on demand is making self-publishing much easier and more affordable. Add to it affordable typesetting/design software, and you have a chance to really crack these cartels.

I recently published my book via a POD publisher (Booksurge). You can see it at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/

I also do micro-runs for wholesale (100 copies of the book at a time).

Interestingly.... I did the entire book design, including the cover, in LaTeX. It came out great. I am extremely happy with the quality that the free software in this area is able to provide. The only few issues are design mistakes I made, and not software limitations (the barcode should be placed differently on the back, etc).

My most recent journal entry includes a follow-up post on advice for people designing books using LaTeX.