Google's Struggle To Reach Authors — of Every Book Ever Written

eldavojohn writes "There's no lack of news surrounding the settlement of Google's controversial move to digitize books — but how do you even start this endeavor? A New York Times story reveals the obstacles they face just to get the word out that they want to settle with publishers and authors everywhere. They turned to a world-wide ad campaign to start the $125 million settlement process and they're spending $7 million to $8 million in paper print ads and telephone hot-lines (handling 80+ languages) to reach as many people as possible. From the article: 'We looked at how many books were published in various areas and we knew from the plaintiffs and Google that 30 percent were published in the US, 30 percent in industrialized countries. The rest of the world is the rest.' That's quite the herculean task! Hopefully Google's efforts in digitizing books will breathe new life and revenue into authors and publishers the world over."

Comments

Amazing numbers

[RichardDeVries]

"that 30 percent were published in the U.S., 30 percent in industrialized countries."
Either the U.S. isn't an industrialized country, or it's the only one on the planet.

"The rest of the world is the rest."
Amazing!

Re:Seance at Google???

[jd]

In other news, Aesop was unavailable for comment, Hans Christian Anderson is too busy being sued by the MPAA for street performances, and Shakespere may owe SCO royalties.

Depends on how you view the tail...

[geekmux]

...Now we're in an age where content costs $0 to bring to the masses but we have a long tail of content of huge value that no one ever sees because bookstores only popularize the hits. Google has the opportunity to popularize the long tail of publishing. This is such great news.

Ah, depends on how you look at it. There's a whole lot of awful crapola that justifies itself sitting on the "long tail" (or ass-end) of publishing.

If you need further proof, do a quick Google search for the word "blog".

Re:Depends on how you view the tail...

[Chris Burke]

I keep trying to find this person for whom my crap is their treasure, but so far everyone I show it too agrees that it's crap. I hope I find them soon, or I'm going to have to start flushing this potential treasure, which just seems like a waste.

Someone once told me I have a poor grasp of metaphor, but I'm not sure what they meant.

I hear the Internet is a good way to reach people

[sootman]

"A New York Times story reveals the obstacles they face just to get the word out..."

Too bad Google doesn't run a really popular website. If they did, they could just put a note up on the front page or something.