In the Vanity Fair article – Is the Google Books Settlement Evil, Jennifer Massoni argues that good or not, the Book Publishing industry is headed towards increasing digitization and it will be hard for any one constituent to halt the momentum. And boy is she right! Having digitized 10Million (and growing) books since 2004, Google is well on it’s way to building the biggest database of online books. Once more, it will dominate Search – for books this time. So what is all the brouhaha all about? Who gains? And who loses?
To begin with, there are three types of books:
- Out of copyright books: readers like you and me will be able to search for these books online, read them, print them or download them. As far as I understand, the writers for said books will get nothing.
- In copyright, out of print books: readers will be able to search for these books online and preview and purchase them – unless the author/publisher chooses to turn off the last two features. But why would they? Today, the only way to get these books (since they are not being sold or printed) is to find them at a library or a used bookstore. With Google Books, everyone benefits in this scenario.
- In copyright, in print books: these are books that can easily be obtained from bookstores. As with option 2., Google Books will allow readers to search for these books, and a) preview the books and purchase them online, if the author/publisher agrees, or b) point them to the nearest library or bookstore that stocks the books.
Ok. But how does it work?
As with all things Google, it’s simple really. You go to http://books.google.com and search for a book. If it’s one of the 10Million titles that has been scanned, or if the search keywords are in any other book that’s been scanned (that’s right, Google Book Search scans titles and book copy) it will be served in the results. You’ll notice that the only interactive part of the book is the table of contents that will let you click to each chapter. Beyond that, it’s really a bastardization (a poor one at that) of the paper version. More on this in a later post.
Great. So who benefits from this?
Readers benefit because we have access to books as long as we have access to the internet. This means that I can search for a book from the couch and potentially be able to start reading it right away. Even if it is out of print. And if it’s one of the 10Million scanned books. It will also democratize knowledge – a principle that’s hard to dislike.
And the payment model for readers is simple. We can download for free (option 1. above), preview and pay author/publisher for download via Google (options 2. and 3.), preview and pay a subscription fee to a library or association (options 2. and 3.) or look up the nearest library or bookstore that stocks that title.
Publishers and libraries benefit as it makes their titles more universally accessible, reduces printing and distribution costs. It will also probably mean lower revenue per title, which may or may not be offset by higher sales – and let’s not forget the lower costs.
Authors benefit in so much as their titles are more universally accessible. While I am no expert, I suspect that (as we are seeing in that other vertical – Online Journalism), the writers will likely not come out the winners. Copyright lies at the heart of the problem. The vast majority of books are protected by copyright. In general, a book is protected by copyright during the author’s lifetime and for a substantial period thereafter for the benefit of the heirs (usually 70 years in the US and the UK). Of the 40Million odd books in US libraries, about 32Million are in copyright. By scanning a copyrighted book, Google has by definition committed piracy. Accordingly, in October 2008, Google agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the Authors’ Guild of American and various American publishers to compensate authors and publishers whose rights it has breached, to the tune of approximately $60 per book, through a mechanism arcanely known as the Book Rights Registry. We will also be hearing more about copyrights from European publishers soon.
Google’s benefits are staggeringly simple…and well, staggering really. Users will now not only come to Google to search for old flames, new dates, videos – now that video has proliferated beyond YouTube, blogs and code; they will also come to search for books or snippets from books. This would translate into even more user data and more ad revenue for Google. Google also gets to pocket a cut of what readers spend purchasing the digital versions – how much remains unclear to this reader. And it gets to exploit it’s database of out of print books and orphan books (for whom no one has claimed copyright – constituting about 5-10% of books scanned by Google) by including these books in subscription deals sold to libraries. Of the 40Million books in US libraries, some 27Million are out of print. In theory, that could be a nice chunk of change for Google. In practice, these books are out of print for a reason and readers may not have an appetite for their digital versions. While it is clear that Google will benefit, and benefit greatly indirectly, it’s too early to quantify the direct benefit.
What is clear, however, is that Amazon’s near monopoly of the digital book business is coming to a close. Small wonder then that Amazon and other behemoths like Microsoft are up in arms against Google. One of their two chief arguments is that the primary responsibility for digitally archiving the world’s books should not rest with a commercial company. I don’t buy that – if anything, it will make the process more efficient, innovative and in line with public interest. Just ask the car industry. The second argument is, of course, that of copyright.
- Parneet
