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I just read a post about google books and a settlement in court authorizing google to digitalize some books. If this is true things might change a lot in the publishing world. Anyone heard more about this subject (and care to comment)?

http://www.patriciabriggs.com/index.shtml

zedd wrote:I just read a post about google books and a settlement in court authorizing google to digitalize some books. If this is true things might change a lot in the publishing world. Anyone heard more about this subject (and care to comment)?

http://www.patriciabriggs.com/index.shtml

My My My. that would turn a lot of things on their head.I have to think it through again before commenting though.

Interesting, very interesting. Makes you wonder how Baen's Free Library and Baen at the Fifth Imperium will play in that. I can see where by having an author's work there a Lawyer can make a case that the work has never left "print", as long as the work remains there and the site. Same sort of thing with Lulu. Right now on first blush it makes Eric Flint and Baen look like genius'. As long as being on a site like that is considered "in print" Google wouldn't be able to touch them as an orphaned work and Baen can republish them in dead tree format anytime they want.

I think that the many lawsuits concerning material on webpages being copied has already answered the question of "is presentation on a website publication?".

All I want to say on the matter is "Ouch. That sucks."

If you have never read the series of articles Eric Flint put out concerning Copyright and DRM and you are interested in that sort of thing you should do so, it is very illuminating. Basically he takes you into the world of publishing and the factors that play in the market and he uses actual numbers, facts and good logical thought from the perpective of being not just an author but also as an editor and a publisher. One thing he used was actually how much it costs most authors if someone does pirate a book online: $3.75. Also there is a vast difference between theft of a book off a shelf and from as he put it "virtual theft of electrons". Since most book stores only carry a few copies of a book a theft there is a loss since a paying customer can't get that book, it can take weeks to months to get new stock in. While in the virtual world of ebooks a paying customer can still buy the thing it hasn't disappeared. Then there is his whole destroying of DRM. The example he used was Jk Rowling's Harry Potter series. Ms. Rowling was so concerned with "online Piracy" she didn't put out an electronic version of her latest book. Before the sun came up, literally, on the day the book went on sale there was a online pirated copy of it. Since the books went on sale at midnight, one enterprising individual bought one and scanned it in and uploaded it to the web. Yep that DRM sure worked there. Thats his whole point most Online Piracy is just that people scan a paper copy of the book they don't attempt to get around the encryption for one simple reason: its cheaper.

Seriously though if you are interested in this debate about when something should go into the public domain and how DRM actually hurts the publishing industry read his articles, you will get some startling facts and quite a few laughs.
http://baens-universe.com/departments/Columns

boballab wrote:One thing he used was actually how much it costs most authors if someone does pirate a book online: $3.75.

It's just as valid to say that every person who borrows a book from a library, buys it second-hand, or borrows a friend's copy has cost the author that same amount.

Digital distribution makes all of these things easier, cheaper, and faster, but that's about the only difference.

Spec8472 wrote:

boballab wrote:One thing he used was actually how much it costs most authors if someone does pirate a book online: $3.75.

It's just as valid to say that every person who borrows a book from a library, buys it second-hand, or borrows a friend's copy has cost the author that same amount.

Digital distribution makes all of these things easier, cheaper, and faster, but that's about the only difference.

Oh he points all those things out but then he shows the benefits to the author that come from these things. He points this little thing called word of mouth which has been around since the time of the Sumarians. How alot of us by books and other things because a friend mentioned it. Then he shows the Pig in a Poke factor. Say you buy a book and you find out after you get into it, you don't like it for various reasons. Well your out the amount of money you spend and that plays a factor in if you would recommend it to someone else or if you would buy that authors next book. He points to how you can basically get almost everyone of his books online for free and he is the only author in any Genre that has everyone of his books still in print, including his first book Mother of Demons published in 1997 and he isn't going broke. He shows how almost all books have 80% of their sales in the first year then drop off after that, usually like a rock, but his hasn't he has had a steady sale rate since the initial large sales and he shows you the numbers for them.