The Los Angeles Times has posted a story covering the US Department of Justice looking into the Google Books - book publisher - authors settlement. The jist of the investigation is simply that the settlement may violate the Sherman Act (the ubiquitous US Anti-Trust act). While the Author's Guild and many publishers have poo-poo'd this investigation, the fact is, the investigation came about as a direct result of public comments.
Amongst others, the American Library Association and the Internet Archive have spoken out questioning the so-called settlement. Why? The stated purpose of Google Books and the whole settlement thing is to allow Google Books and participating institutions to create a digital book market. At first glance, this sounds like a good thing. Universities, Colleges and private institutions would gain income from titles sitting dormant on their shelves. Google gets, well, what Google wants - more exposure and more control over the internet.
The problem is that by doing so, Google would retain a high level of exclusivity over content distribution and management. In my book (pun intended), that spells monopoly. Google leaves it up to the publisher, author or copyright owner to come forward and make a formal statement of inclusion or exclusion in the system. The basis of this move is simple: if you dont' say anything by a certain date, tough luck. Unlike the US and other international Copyright laws, there is very little governng Google's actions. Yet.
As a publisher of digital material (and eventually hard print, but that is another story), how do I feel about this? The material offered by Google Books is, at best, good to deplorable. I recently purchased a copy of a title listed as Thomas Tredgold's Practical Carpentry through one of the Google participants. The quality of the text was good, but the reproduction of the engravings was miserable. Much of the detail was illegible. In addition, the title was liste incorrectly. This is actually Peter Nicholson's Practical Carpentry, Revised by Thomas Tredgold. What we have is a simple matter of taking an existing Google Book file and arranging for a Print On Demand agency to print the book.The propriatary Google software that produces the white background of it's PDF files has the unfortunate side-effect of eradicating much detail in any resident images. As half the content of this title is made up of engravings, that's a problem.
When Google first announced it's Books service, the stated intent was to open the shelves of the world's libraries to the public. Now, Google is working on yet another angle to make money. Sure, the various institutions could make some money from this process. Sure, the same can be said for publishers and authors. The problem is in the monopolistic control Google will gain over digital publishing. The restrictions and multitudinous steps a person must go through to register their works is rediculous if not insane. If any normal publisher required this junk of an author or copyright holder, publishing would have gone out of business ages ago.
Do I feel threatened as a small publisher? At first, my thought was "oh no! All the good stuff will be out there before I have the opportunity to offer it". As time passed, I found myself blanching at the quality of the material, at the high price of a POD copy from the system and at the difficulty in finding the titles in the first place. I won't even get into the whole Ebay Google books bootleg explosion. What was it W. C. Fields once said? Now I believe there is a role for the independent digital or POD publisher. Quality counts. Pricing counts. Reputation counts. Would I buy another book from the same University that I bought Practical Carpentry from? Never. Would I buy from any other Google Books participant? Highly unlikely.
I've had discussions with two of the services that have been involved with Google Books and their POD enterprise. The bottom line is numbers in production, not quality. But then, I am one of those people who, if I am reading a POD or a digital book, like it to look like a book and not like a victim of a gallon of bleach. I like the look of folded page tips, blotches and margin notes. I like the look of off center text blocks, knowing the printer or binder must have had a few too many at lunch that day.
There is merit in bringing libraries into the public realm and I applaud Google for taking the lead in the process. I decry and reject their monopolistic approach, as much as I do the same of Amazon (Writing that sentence gives me goosebumps. It feels like a high school debating statement!). The fewer competitors, the lower the quality and higher the pricing.
Enough ranting for today.
Till next, Gary
