Tag Archives: Google Book Search

Google Settlement & the author’s responsibility

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Eoin Purcell

Samantha Holman of the ICLA addresses the Mercier Author Meeting

Samantha Holman of the ICLA addresses the Mercier Author Meeting

Head wrecking
Mercier has spent the last few weeks in an intense period of trying to figure out our response to the Google Books Settlement. I have to hand it our our MD, Clodagh Feehan who has gone at this with gusto and pushed for answers to questions none of us even realised we had!

The result was an author meeting last Tuesday evening in the Rochestown Park Hotel which brought out about 30 authors but generated a good few more calls and letters from people who couldn’t attend. We were fortunate to have Samantha Holamn of the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency on hand to give us a very thorough review of the deal and while I don’t think anyone was happy (at least not with the deal as it has been agreed that is) we all at least understood the concept much more.

Authors need to act
By far the biggest single thought that emerged for me was not that Publishers need to take action, because surely by now most of them have realised that, one way or the other, they must. Nor was it the unsettling feeling that something in a relatively minor court in a foreign jurisdiction was changing copyrights (and the not too often mention suggestion that Moral Rights might be affected by such things as advertising) for what many see as the worse.

No, the biggest thing was that authors need to take responsibility for their own works and make decisions AS WELL AS PUBLISHERS. Many authors felt that their publisher would take care of matters but the truth is that both parties need to claim their works. Especially as sometime in the future a book may go out of print with a publisher and at that stage, an author or their heirs need to have assert control over usage.

So, if you are an author and you have a reasonable belief that Google have scanned your works, which seems likely as they have scanned about 7 Million books, you should head to the Google Settlement site and claim your books.

Read some more opinions, there are many voices out there offering their thoughts. A good few of them disagree with my perspective which is that despite the fact that this is not an ideal settlement, it’s not a terrible one and that the way it operates at a practical level may well determine its level of success. In terms of thoughts Mike Shatzkin & Michael Cairns offers interesting considerations but there are many others. I’d also recommend Adam Hodgkin at Exact Editions and Martyn Daniels at Brave New World not forgetting the wonderful Booksquare which is always full of great discussion.

Authors, take action! Read, think, claim and decide your stance. In some ways your choice is limited by the very fact that you have to decided but, as I am pretty sure you are not armed with enough cash to sue Google, that is where we are!
Eoin

Google Books & The Orphan Works Problem

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Eoin Purcell

Some People Who Are Smarter Than Me
Have been doing a great deal of thinking about the Orphan Works part of the Google Book Search Settlement.

Mike Shatzkin has a few posts on the issue. A slightly different take on the Google settlement hits onto the idea that exploiting the few titles (in percentage terms but still quite large group of titles) that could warrant a full scale print run would be very lucrative:

My hunch is that the biggest revenue generator across the entire load of copyrights that the settlement will liberate for at least the next ten years will be books printed in press-run quantities. Who ever thought that the biggest beneficiaries of the Google settlement in the medium term could be agents and packagers? If somebody has previously mentioned the possibility, I hadn’t noticed. It only occurred to me day before yesterday.

Cairns reminds me that our friend (and fellow Michael) Cader thinks that the chances of any real “gems” being found in this orphan pile are remote. Of course, things that are remote possibilities happen from time to time over enough occurrences, and there will be a lot of books liberated. Surely there are many, in the categories mentioned above and others, that will warrant a first printing of 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000, or with the right packaging and promotion, even more than that. Even in these troubled times, there might be some additions to staff at packagers or publishers to sift through these opportunities. Assuming these deals are to be made by the Book Rights Registry, let’s hope they have an agent on the staff along with the database sales manager.

But then in his second post, More on the Google settlement, he realised he was in error:

Why was that element left out of the settlement? Did the negotiating parties even contemplate it? And exactly how useful is the “orphan” relief if this huge portion of the potential revenue (and public value) is omitted? Were the parties so fixated on electronic exploitation that they just didn’t notice this?

It looks like the need for Congress to act is about as urgent as it was before. The Copyright Office has long noted the need for Orphan Works legislation in a host of contexts and has been unable to goad our legislators to take the necessary steps. It had been my hope that the Google settlement cut the Gordian knot, but it would appear that the problem of true public access is a long way from being solved.

There’s more of course
It’s quite a pickle this settlement. Adam Hodgkins recently offered his thoughts on where he saw the ebook/digital book market and they are certainly worth reading. Most importantly he points to Apple’s role:

The position that Apple have announced for themselves is stylish, decisive and agnostic. Apple doesn’t mind whether books are based in the cloud as web resources, or shipped around the internet as book-specific file formats. Web-based books, digital editions and ebook file formats can all run easily on the iPhone if that is what is needed: “Open house, come over here and play”. That is the message from Cupertino. But Apple is also saying that if you want to trade these new booky gizmos on the Apple platform and sell them through the Apple e-commerce system, you will be expected to pay 30% of the gross to Apple. While you are at it you might as well call them Apps. In consideration for this courteous invitation, Apple will handle the transaction and any strictly necessary hosting fees.

Adam has also made some interesting points about which platform will won out pne where you use a device to download an ebook or one where you use and online service like GBS (Or Exact Editions).

In many ways though his post, Google Book Search and the Tragedy of the Anti-Commons, hit on what Mike stumbled on too though he didn’t quite raise it explicitly, discussing instead the foreign territory issue, which is for me and mst people outside of the US a bit issue:

There is a good chance that the Google Books Settlement is going to show us all how this tragedy of the anti-commons works out in the world of books. The Google project, which is backed by the American publishers and American Authors’s representatives should be (in my view will be) a wonderful resource for American universities, schools, public libraries and through them for American consumers. By 2011, if the Settlement is approved, at least 5 million out of print but not yet out of copyright [OOPnotYOOC] titles will be available to readers in the US market. This resource will have little opportunity to work so well for authors, readers and consumers in the rest of the world. The books will by and large not be available in the rest of the world (perhaps in American embassies?).

Where does all this leave us?
I suspect that there will be quite a lot of activity around the out of print but not yet out of copyright books that Mike Identified as the most lucrative. For one thing, there is money to be made and a good chance that no backflow will result. It would be wonderful if an agreement could be reached to cover what would happen if a rights holder cam out of the wood work many years later or even after a reasonable period of research was undertaken in an attempt to secure permission.

For another the technology to allow one off one copy printing will be spread much more widely over the next few years and that will put pressure on digital warehouses to serve these titles, especially if discovery of these titles gets easier.

So, all in all I think there are many questions to be answered here and no-one to really answer them. One thing is becoming clear though, Google are winning whatever happens, despite the settlement!

Watch this space, I don’t think the fat lady has begun to sing just yet!
Eoin

PS: And, if you are Irish, The Irish Times has a decent summary of what the deal will mean for Irish Authors.

Links of Interest (At Least to Me) 12/02/2009

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Eoin Purcell

Anthony Cheetham resigns from Quercus, not too surprising I suggest given his latest moves.
Here

HarperCollins closes the Collins division in the US. Harsh medicine being served across the Atlantic.
Here

Google has gone mobile with its Booksearch.
Here

Kindle seems to be set for a UK launch, I wonder if that means Ireland too, here’s hoping.
Here

Interesting and not all good news,
Eoin

Google Book Search Deal – The impact, initial thoughts

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Eoin Purcell

So here are my initial thoughts & a poll

1) What about the rest of the world?
In the short term this just reinforces the impression that Europe is way behind America in making digital trade publishing a reality.

It not just that Amazon isn’t even bothering to launch Kindle in the UK in 2008 or that despite some decent sales, Sony’s Reader is making only ripples, but by being outside of this deal and being split into dozens of separate territories, Europe will be waiting for years until it is covered by a deal as comprehensive as thus! Just as it is taking years for sales of TV shows to shuffle onto our iTunes accounts.

As a consumer that is a frustration, as a small publisher it means more waiting, more second guessing myself and much much more wondering what the hell IS going to happen. The truth is, Google has the capacity to act to create an open market, just as Amazon has the capacity to create a closed market (as it is with Kindle).

Sub Note: The Proposed notice from Google & it soppents does contains ome details for the publishers of non-us books. Not sure how far it takes us but in any case here it is:

ATTENTION AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS OUTSIDE THE UNITED
STATES: If you are a rightsholder who is a national of, or is otherwise located in, a country other than the United States, you are likely to own a U.S. copyright interest if (a) your Book was published in the United States, or (b) your Book was not published in the United States, but your country has copyright relations with the United States because it is a member of the Berne Convention, or (c) your country had copyright relations with the United States at the time of the Book’s publication. You should assume that you own a U.S. copyright interest in your Book, unless you are certain that your Book was published in, and that you reside and are located in, one of the few countries that have not had or do not now have copyright relations with the United States.
For a list of countries with which the United States has copyright relations, please visit http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38a.html or request it from the Settlement Administrator. If you own a copyright in a Book or Insert published in a country outside the United States, you are advised to seek advice from an attorney or a Reproduction Rights Organization to determine whether your interests would be better served by participating in this Settlement or opting out of the Settlement.
You may also contact the appropriate telephone numbers on the list attached to this Notice for further advice.

2) Finally a Soundly Based Orphan Rights Agency
The amount of money that will go to pay for the “Registry” seems to me to be a great outcome. Even a fancy Registry will take some time spending the money assigned:

US $34.5 million paid by Google to establish and maintain a Book Rights Registry (“Registry”) to collect revenues from Google and distribute those revenues to copyright owners.

Especially if as envisaged, it generates a revenue stream! Hopefully a similar model will be rolled out across the world! HOPEFULLY INDEED!

3) Revenue streams
If there is one thing likely to make publishers sit up and take notice, it is revenue streams. Money makes the world goes around after all. Google’s deal creates both the method of charging and a method for paying out any money generated.

For every publisher this is enticing, it makes working with google pretty attractive. And the beauty of it all is that Google does the back breaking work for you! Seems like a fools game! Which means there is a downside.

4) The Downside
Google wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t help them achieve their goal, which aside from the urge to no “be evil”, is to make money and organise the world’s information.

Even if this works for the current crop of publishers, it surely brings us closer to the day when Google controls the entire publishing value change except the author.

If there is truly to be a digital trade publishing market, then Google controls all the access to that. they won’t need publishers to provide content, just authors (and maybe editors). Authors of course would no doubt be happy to get a bigger slice of the value if Google offers it!

Think it through and it is a little freaky for publishers. Of course it might be a ways off and the (and maybe editors) piece is of interest. Filters as we have discussed here previously are important. Perhaps Google’s core strength in search will enable it do automate the function of editors and allow readers preferences to filter the content of the masses.

Certainly, that is how they have succeeded on the web!

I’ll write some more when these thoughts develop.
Eoin