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

Posted by timothy on from the paper-of-record dept.

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."

7 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. free books? by cyberpear · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So, is google going to have an ad-based way to read books online for free?

    1. Re:free books? by digitalchinky · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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 can understand indexing web based content that is already on line and publicly accessible, but if I write a book, I want to be in control of where, when, and how it gets presented to the reader, at least initially anyway. I don't mind (or care) what an individual does once it's 'out there' - from format shifting to selling it at a used book store or giving away. I'm not so keen on the idea of google making a copy for the entire world to readily view a large chunk of it all.

      Sure google could probably make me more money through exposure that I might not otherwise have, but shouldn't that be my choice?

    2. Re:free books? by blhack · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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 am not an author, so I don't know, but.

      Are libraries required to ask permission of the author to offer their books? I have to imagine not.
      This brings up a very interesting topic for debate...thinking about digital libraries, that is. 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?

      I would have absolutely no problem at all with a DRM-locked file that sits on my kindle one at a time. I only get to keep one (or two or 3 or 20 or whatever *your* local library has at its limit) at a time, and only get a new one if I delete the old one etc. etc. etc.

      Are there laws that explicitly allow dead-tree libraries, but forbid digital ones?

      --
      NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
    3. Re:free books? by horatiocain · · Score: 2, Interesting

      but if I write a book, I want to be in control of where, when, and how it gets presented to the reader, at least initially anyway

      See, this here sentiment - this pervasive idea of 'I want to control the data I create' - is just fucking crazy. If you don't think that it is an unnatural, unjustifiable hack to our system of ethics to teach people that they should be allowed to own information, just look at this statement and think of someone applying it to a knock-knock joke, a piece of gossip, a new translation of the bible, or a speech. It's just crazy, though maybe it doesn't seem it because we're used to it.

    4. Re:free books? by scharkalvin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A library only has a finite number of copies of a book and they can't lend more copies than they have. I guess a digital library could be legal if:
      1: the library paid for, or was given the rights to lend a fixed number of 'copies' of each book.
      2: when the copies were 'checked out' the library couldn't lend any additional copies until the copies were 'returned'.
      3: the host and client software would have to co-ordinate the deletion of the returned copy from the user and the checking in to the library of the returned copy.

  2. Re:Google will popularize the long tail. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With diminishing cost of publishing books also comes book spam.

  3. Re:Depends on how you view the tail... by blahplusplus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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."

    There's also a lot of interesting literature on many subjects that is not widely read outside academia or the research community but which many people nonetheless find fascinating. I can't count how many times I've found great books I've bookmarked for later reading via google.

    Remember you get results based on key words, if you're going to get crap it's likely you were looking for it to begin with. One man's crappy book is another man's treasure.