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

free books?

[cyberpear]

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

Re:free books?

[digitalchinky]

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?

Re:free books?

[blhack]

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?

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?

[I'm not really here]

My local library has a "digital library" available. I can download their application and listen to a book on my laptop, can read a book in their proprietary reader, etc. Their system simply disallows the physical copy to leave the library while the digital copy is out, thereby ensuring that they've purchased the rights to lend that book.

You can't get it on a kindle, but if you have a netbook running windows, the digital library is here. If you're using an e-book reader, or use any other OS, you're screwed (This is one of the many myriad of reasons that my house still has XP machines in it, though Linux is stepping in where I can use it).

It's not that the digital library isn't here, it's that it's crippled beyond use for many people, and that is what will ultimately destroy the concept.

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?

[horatiocain]

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.

Re:free books?

[swillden]

Shouldn't it be an opt-in service rather than opt-out?

It is an opt-in service, for books that are in print. For books that are not being published anyway, it's opt-out.

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

That's nice that you want that, but you have to explain why society should spend money on police and courts, etc., to make sure that you get what you want, given that information is naturally infinitely replicable.

The purpose of copyright is to benefit society, not authors. The way it works is that we grant you a temporary, strictly limited monopoly in exchange for your effort to produce and publish the work. The precise boundaries of that monopoly are a subject for legislators and courts to work out, ideally with the goal of creating a structure that provides maximal flow of materials into the public domain with minimal cost to society, where "cost" refers not only to money spent enforcing copyright laws, but also restrictions placed on members of society.

What authors want out of the deal is relevant ONLY insofar that if certain elements are missing substantial numbers of them may opt not to publish. That would indicate a failure of the legal system to produce an appropriate balance. However, simply giving authors complete control, as you seem to think they should have, would *also* indicate a failure to produce an appropriate balance.

IMO, the balance proposed by Google is an eminently sensible one which, if anything, is tilted in favor of copyright holders.

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.

Re:free books?

[scharkalvin]

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.

Re:free books?

[Xerolooper]

You kind of hit on where this is all heading. We have shows and movies on demand. Music is getting there even though certain organizations are fighting it. Information in general is to a great degree at our fingertips on the interwebs. Even real time data from traffic cameras etc.

At some point we simple become the nexus of all this data. On one hand we are freed from having to hoard information like many professional had to in the past. On the other hand personally I find it addicting. I haven't gone more than a week without internet since the 90's and even then I had my cell phone.

Seance at Google???

[Archangel Michael]

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

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.

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!

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.

Re:Google will popularize the long tail.

[Anonymous Coward]

With diminishing cost of publishing books also comes book spam.

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.

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...

[blahplusplus]

"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.

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.

Re:awful for technical searches

[Esine]

It's not like they're going to use the same exact search algorithm or parameters for everything. Look at Google Code Search (http://google.com/codesearch). It even supports (limited) regexp!

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.

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.

Speaking as an author...

[SirGarlon]

Speaking as an author, I do not want my works digitized by Google because it screws me out of the ability to sell digital copies myself.