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

Seance at Google???

[Archangel Michael]

I hear that it might be kind of hard to reach that Moses guy ...

Google will popularize the long tail.

[gravos]

We are moving into a more and more complicated world. In the past, work had great costs to bring to the people, and thus the business model made as much money as possible from distribution over a short period of time before those printing resources were moved to a newer piece of material. 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.

Ick. Ugh.

[girlintraining]

Hopefully Google will realize that most everything published had, as a condition of publication, the loss of the author's rights to that work either temporarily or permanently. If Google really wants to digitize books en masse, why not start by killing the concept of the exclusive contract and the equally nefarious "work for hire" clauses that are cropping up around the world... Meaning that NO MATTER WHAT an author retains the right to his/her own work. Call it the "It's Mine, Dammit" Doctrine. Because I think it's easier to convince an individual author of the social benefits of digitization than it is to convince some f*ck in a suit. If you want an example of this -- find some work that's totally void of any social benefit -- say a coupon booklet or one of those pamplets sitting in waiting rooms around the world. Now, try and get permission to reproduce it... understanding you've picked the most useless thing you could find to duplicate.

Better yet, let's just tell governments around the world to go to hell, and start digitizing this stuff on our own and making it available for free, and on page one, write "In Memory of Corporate F*cktards Everywhere". But that would be too inflammatory, so someone with slightly more tact should write that page. ;)

Re:Ick. Ugh.

[bcrowell]

Hopefully Google will realize that most everything published had, as a condition of publication, the loss of the author's rights to that work either temporarily or permanently.

Well, no. It's quite common for authors to retain copyright when they sign a contract with a publisher. For instance, here is a list of some short stories I've had published. Some of these were published in print magazines, some in electronic magazines. None of them asked me for a copyright assignment. Whether or not a publisher requires a copyright assignment depends completely on the publisher, the genre, and the customs of that particular market segment. I pulled the first three books off of the bookshelf next to my computer. How to Brew, by John Palmer, is (c) John Palmer. Programming Perl, by Wall, Christiansen, and Orwant, os (c) O'Reilly. Pragmatic Version Control, by Travis Swicegood, is (c) Travis Swicegood. So your "most everything published" is has a batting average of 1/3 in my sample.

If Google really wants to digitize books en masse, why not start by killing the concept of the exclusive contract and the equally nefarious "work for hire" clauses that are cropping up around the world

Lots of problems with your suggestion:

1. They're digitizing books that have already been published. You can't change the contracts retroactively.
2. The reason print publishers require exclusive contracts is that printing costs are almost entirely setup costs. Once you have the job set up on a traditional (not POD) press, the incremental cost of producing one more copy is very small. So the nature of publishing is that you invest a lot of capital up front in order to publish a particular book, and then you hope to make it back over time. The publisher wants an exclusive contract so that they can't be undercut by some other publisher.
3. These exclusive contracts don't last forever. I have one sitting in my drawer for a story I sold to Dell Magazines. It states "The Seller agrees he will not permit any other publication of the Work [...] until one month after first publication of the Work in the Publisher's magazine." Since the story was publisher more than a month ago, and since they didn't require a copyright assignment, I'm now free to do whatever I like with it. The books that Google is scanning are mostly out of print, and almost all book contracts provide that when the book goes out of print, the exclusive contract is terminated, and the copyright assignment (if any) reverts to the author.

overabundance is a GOOD thing

[cekander]

won't we have as much trouble getting useful content from Google's collection of books as we do from its collection of websites?

Google made it EASY to search websites. It's now possible for anybody to publish a website in a sea of noise, and get noticed, provided someone is looking for their content. This was impossible before google.

Given that we have tools to organize, having an over-abundance of something is a healthy sign. It means people are being stimulated to provide, and consumers are consuming. If the consumers AREN'T consuming, then the system will naturally find a balance where mostly only consumables are being provided.

Right now (via tv, cinema, book publishers, record labels, radio, etc) we have a system where consumables are being shoved down throats to make a buck. Kinda sucks, don't you think?

I can't wait till this archaic model of distribution goes the way of the dinosaur.

Re:free books?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, legally, can a dead-tree library exist, but a digital one cannot? Why can I not get digitized books for free on my Kindle?

The cost/effort of copying a dead-tree version of War & Peace, for example, outweighs the cost/effort of purchasing a copy. Likely it may even cost more with inferior results. Digital copies take little to no effort and the result is identical.

Re:free books?

[nine-times]

Those are some interesting questions, and I think many of them highlight how much digital media changes things. IANAL, so proceed with caution.

As far as the legal distinction, it is in the fact that you can buy a copy of a copyrighted work and you can lend that copy, but you cannot copy that copy and distribute your copies. So your library can buy 10 copies and lend each one out, but they can't buy one copy, make 9 other copies, and lend them out. It's complicated further by the fact that we're constantly copying data, backing it up, caching it, etc. So pretty much anything that's not covered in some kind of "fair use" provision usually ends up needing a license.

It might be interesting if someone came up with a "digital library" model where they licensed X copies of a book, the license allowing them to then "lend" that book to X customers at a time. It would probably need to be DRMed and be subscription based, and you'd have to get authors/publishers to agree to it. I'm not sure they would agree to it.

To talk about it on a slightly less legalistic tone, I think it's an important distinction that public libraries do have to buy the books they own, or even if the books are donated, someone has purchased them. That means that the publisher, and therefore the writer, still gets some amount of money. Also, because of the increased use each book gets, I would guess that libraries have to periodically replace old books, assuming they're getting lots of use.

If you're suggesting that everyone could download books for free and never have to replace them, then I don't know where authors would get money. As a society, I do think it's good for us to have some kind of laws surrounding "intellectual property" that allows for business models where the creators get paid.

Re:free books?

[bcrowell]

Maybe. Probably a better question is why are we allowing google to continue doing this at all? Shouldn't it be an opt-in service rather than opt-out? Shouldn't it have always been that way?

I'll give you several arguments to the contrary:

1. On this page, linked to from the NY Times article, Google denies that it has done anything illegal. Google says that it comes under the fair use exception to copyright. Under U.S. law, fair use is based on several criteria. Google argues that their use matches enough of these criteria well enough that it qualifies as fair use. IANAL, but I'd say they're probably right.
2. The part of the U.S. Constitution establishing copyright says, "The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Note that the purpose of copyright is not to promote profitable business, it's to promote the progress of science and the arts. The vast majority of all books ever published are now out of print, so it seems likely that the vast majority of the books google is scanning are out of print. If a book is unobtainable, I don't think it's serving the purpose of promoting the progress of science and the arts.
3. If the vast majority of the books google is scanning are out of print, then the author is typically making zero income from the book. That means the author has nothing to lose. In fact the author may be dead, or there may be no way to contact the author. (The normal way you contact an author is by sending mail care of their publisher. Not gonna work if the book has been out of print since 1925.) If an author's book is still in print, then the publisher can just systematically handle the opting in or opting out. They can opt out for every single title they have in print, or they can contact authors and ask them what they want.
4. Google argues that this is the modern equivalent of a card catalog. They're right.