Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.