Better World Books Stance on Google Books Settlement

Posted by Jack on 11.18.2008 at 12:00 pm

The long awaited settlement for the Author’s Guild, AAP and Google is official.  Under the settlement, “Google will have the right to make browsable copies of the books it has scanned through its Library Project as well as books scanned in through its regular Book Search program.”

From Publisher’s Weekly:

As part of the $125 million settlement, Google will pay $45 million to settle the class action lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild. Authors whose books have already been scanned will receive at least $60 per work. Another $34.5 million will go toward the creation of a Book Rights Registry that will be responsible for building a database of rightsholders information and for disbursing all money generated through the use of books in Google Products and Services. (The remaining $45.5 million will go to legal and attorney fees). Under the deal, Google will receive 37% of revenue and rightsholders 63%. Publishers and authors will have 120 days to opt out of the settlement once the agreement receives approval from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, something that is expected to take several months.

How does this affect us? Well, up to this point Google maintains that they will not be getting involved in the physical book business. They want to index all the out of print books as well as any books they can get their (rather large) paws on. In regards to this, it would be silly to suggest that we are anything but excited about the prospect of the mass availability of books. If we were worried about access to books as a potential negative for our business, chances are we (1) would not working extensively with 1000+ libraries in North America and (2) would be stocking up on eBooks.

Besides, fundamentally we’re lovers of books. I’m just as excited as anyone that if I want to be a little pretentious in a letter and quote from Madame Bovary (in French, natch) that Google Books allows me the opportunity to do so without having to purchase the book or find it at a local library. (Besides, my book backlog right now is hovering at 8 or so books).

It would be brash to say that there’s not murmurs of worry in the industry though. Considering Google just paid their legal team on this case more than we make in revenue in a given year, it wouldn’t take much effort for them to come in and be a major player in the book selling market. With Google.org and their relative propensity towards making socially responsible decisions, I don’t doubt that Google will find a way to make their revenue into a positive influence, but short of changing into a triple bottom line company, I tend to trust the guarantee that we offer significantly more than just a predilection towards giving.

But let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the meantime:
“la parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles.” ["...human speech is a cracked cauldron on which we bang out beats that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity"]

Thanks, Google!

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