An urgent message to all you budding authors out there. In yesterday's Sunday Times I spotted this announcement from GOOGLE and thought a timely reminder would be of assistance to any writers on this forum. The first cut off date quoted is May 5, 2009
Interesting, if it happens then Google will have the right to publish my books and I will get nothing, it seems! Unless I am prepared to fund an action against them...
FAQs: FAQs - Google Book Settlement Be interesting to see what they intend to do with scanned books post-settlement. If it's primarily to build a search system that directs people to books more accurately then that wouldn't cause too many ripples, but they don't seem to be quite such a 'wholesome' company post-sale. We'll see - lots of blogging building on it but not much hard info out there yet. The writers guild seem quite intrigued & positive. Looks like there'll maybe be a rights system more like music publishing? If that was arranged fairly then this could be good for authors while making stuff more easily available for the rest of us. WGGB - News - Google Books settlement Maybe it could be entwined with bringing publishing of hard copies on demand forward, something that could free up a lot of out of print stuff while at the same time giving the authors their share. Fingers crossed. Looks quite complex.
Sad to see that Google has caved in and has been ripped off to the tune of 80 million dollars. Court action might have dragged on for years. By scanning key samples of books (Google had already reluctantly agreed not to scan the full text) authors get tremendous free publicity. The Google archive will be maintained in perpetuity and the works of many obscure authors would not be otherwise preserved. Microsoft and Google are the golden milch-cows of the 21st century, irresistible to the American culture of suing everything in sight.