Google revolution the end of the publishing world?

The settlement, which currently awaits approval by a Manhattan court, will let Google continue with its project of digitalizing copyrighted works that have gone out of print and making their contents available online.

Undoubtedly, the single party that will benefit most from this settlement will be the readers. Publishers and authors seem to be more or less satisfied with the agreement. The only party that has started to raise objections against Google’s looming domination of the publishing world is booksellers. It is evident that this development will spread to other parts of the world, with the first “shock wave” already hitting Europe. François Dubruille, the director of the European Booksellers Federation, says the settlement is a dangerous one that will stop the public from going to bookstores. In the meantime, the European Booksellers Federation has declared that it will take the issue to the European Commission if a similar deal is reached between Google and European publishers.

The new deal has the potential to bring about drastic changes for the publishing industry. It might even affect the book supplements of newspapers and literature periodicals. Today’s Zaman asked prominent US editors and book critics how the “Google revolution” will shape the future of the publishing world.

Sam Tanenhaus editor of The New York Times Book Review

My (not especially well-informed) view -- based simply on the article I read on this development in the Times -- is that the Google settlement is the rare instance of a “win-win” in which both sides gain from the result. I don’t think the settlement will have much direct impact on newspaper book-reviewing or on literary magazines, which are threatened more severely by so many other forces, chief among them the dwindling readership for print media in our increasingly digital age.

Carlin Romano literary critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and former president of the National Book Critics Circle

Both Google and authors emerge as winners. Google wins because, for a tiny $125 million settlement, it gets to set up another near-monopoly business, the selling of out-of-print books online, and take a 37 percent cut. Authors of out-of-print books win because they’ll get otherwise unobtainable revenue for online purchase of older books that normally would not produce any royalties.

The losers, aside from the would-be online competitors of Google, are sellers of used books, both companies and individuals. Google’s service will surely lessen demand for out-of-print books. But that doesn’t violate the philosophy behind copyright, because authors traditionally receive no remuneration for sale of used copies of their books.

As for book reviews and literary journalism, they are shrinking in the US because many top newspaper editors and publishers, who typically come out of non-literary parts of the business, are too dimwitted to notice that producing coverage that appeals to serious readers increases the circulation, prestige and advertising of a newspaper. It is no accident, but little recognized, that the American newspapers with the largest circulations (the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times and The Washington Post) are precisely the papers with the most book coverage. Eventually, I think, most newspaper literary journalism will appear exclusively online, but companies that understand the conveniences of print newspapers may still publish paper versions for those willing to pay a premium for them.

Peter Osnos editor-at-large of PublicAffairs books

There has been a lot of major news … but, for the media business, nothing was more important than Google’s settlement with book publishers of lawsuits challenging the right to digitize copyrighted books for search and distribution without paying for them. Google will pay $125 million to the plaintiffs, publishers and authors, and will cover legal fees for what was a protracted haggle. A structure will be established to continue the scanning of millions of books and making them available for online access with a pricing protocol that can be monitored via sales or, for libraries, subscriptions. There is even a split for any advertising revenue generated by the book pages. The agreement itself is 141 pages plus attachments, and there will now be months of sorting out the details before final court approval and a launch sometime in 2009. Having plowed through the agreement myself and read whatever analysis I could find, there are still a myriad of vexing issues to be resolved, such as whether a book available only in digital form can be considered “in print”; how to accommodate access online for single use versus the right to print or forward the material; setting a reasonable royalty split between authors and publishers for e-books; whether the library subscription model has any further commercial applications, and so forth. This deal is very much a work in progress, and while congratulations are in order to the negotiators, care with nuance is going to be crucial.

But the major point is that Google has now conceded, with a very large payment, that “information is not free.” This leads to an obvious, critical question: Why aren’t newspapers and magazines demanding payment for use of their stories on Google and other search engines? Why are they not getting a significant slice of the advertising revenues generated by use of their stories via Google?

Frank Wilson editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review

I am no better at predicting the future than anyone else, which is to say I’m not any good at it at all. But anyone interested in books and reading and writing has to have noticed that publishing has changed a lot -- and rapidly -- over the past several years, and we can learn a lot by pondering the direction things in the field seem to be taking.

The most significant development is that anyone who is interested in writing can now, thanks to the Internet and POD [print-on-demand] technology, bring what he writes to the attention of the public. Both publishers and reviewers ought to be paying more attention to this because, among all these literary irregulars (if I may call them that), there are bound to be some of exceptional talent. But newspapers, at least in the United States, are devoting less and less space to book coverage. Most American dailies offer little of interest to people who appreciate literature, drama and music that lasts longer than three minutes.

This leads me to think that a national publication aimed at the common reader and focusing on books of general interest could attract a substantial number of subscribers, especially if it didn’t encumber itself with ideological shackles and found some fresh reviewers among those in the literary blogosphere. And what I am talking about is a publication printed on paper. Printed material remains a convenient form of publication, and the sort I have in mind, by being cognizant of what is happening online, could establish a symbiotic relation with the Internet. In other words, there will continue to be a place for print media, but the center of gravity has already shifted to cyberspace. Paradoxical though it may seem, print media that thrives will do so precisely by taking advantage of that.