Content Crossroads & Distribution Junction
Are Book Search Tools Taking Away Your
Online Opportunity?
“Google has a great business model—[to] take what someone else has spent a lot of time and money creating for free, post it, sell ads around it and make lots of money,” Schroeder says.
Google, on the other hand, sees its project to make the full text of books searchable online differently.
“The important point is that we’re helping readers find books,” says Tom Turvey, head of Google Book Search Partnerships. “We believe very strongly in copyright protections, and rewarding authors and publishers for their creative efforts, and we’ve designed Book Search to comply with international copyright laws.”
AAP and the others who have lawsuits against the Google Book Search Library program believe that if the creators want to give Google permission, that is one thing, or if the creators feel they should share some of the ad revenue generated by their creation, they should be able to negotiate that.
Despite the lawsuits, publishers need to decide for themselves if Book Search services will help or hurt their bottom line. For books no longer in copyright, users will be able to freely view, browse and read these materials. For books still under copyright protection, “If publishers or authors don’t want to have their books digitized, they will be excluded,” Turvey says.
Schroeder believes Google Book Search tools are taking business away from individual publisher’s Web sites. “Publishers and authors also sell digital books, so Google has taken a big market away from them by digitizing copyrighted works in libraries,” she says.
Turvey states that publishers understand that Google is bringing additional interest to their books from searchers who may not have known a particular book existed before searching for a topic online. “By marketing books online or by offering new access to books online, publishers and authors can find new audiences for their works,” he says.
