The advertising model is in fact a dying model for publishers, not a new one. Many good magazines and newspapers are in serious financial trouble because they cannot sell enough ads either in print or online. There are simply too many ad venues now for most publishers to make significant money off selling ads. Most books are not bestsellers and simply will not sell in the millions, or would be read in the millions even if they were given away. Consequently, the ad revenues will likely be negligible for many excellent books. The Settlement does not make any guarantees as to what revenues publishers will receive from ad or e-book sales–or indeed, guarantee they will receive any revenues at all. If Google cannot come up with a model that makes money for the publishers and authors (as opposed to Google, who WILL make money), the publishers and authors are still stuck with the terms of Settlement. Which, by the way, makes its members actually PAY an undefined amount to support the database required by the Settlement—Google’s not shouldering that cost.

As someone who’s earned my living as a writer all my adult life, I take the issue of getting paid very seriously. There is no reason why members of every other profession should get paid a living wage, and expect me to slave for no pay to entertain and inform them. Why should I bother? Likewise, why should I work for a pittance to increase Google profits?

Speaking on the present one, how many authors you would make an appropriate amount if they launch a digital book and have it on sale? I am pointing exactly at what you have, regarding new authors. I think that would be only one time payment, the rest of the people would get it through distribution and redistribution from a single buy out. Perhaps the things will change in times to come, for the good.

Now… if Google Books was taking newly release books and copying them in their entirety and making them available to the public at no charge, that would not be fair to the authors/publishers but if like on Kindle, where Amazon.com sells a digital copy, I’m sure there are royalties worked out to be paid to the publishers/authors so all should be happy.

Eventually, authors/publishers of ANY AND ALL media will have to realize that they will start to get a much lower royalty per unit when it’s in digital form compared to a material form… but then their cost to make one digital copy and then turn that into millions of digital units for resale compared to printing millions of hard media units. The music and movie industry has mostly made that move so books and other printed media will just have to let go of the the past 20 centuries and move into the 21st century.

I don’t understand how Google Books is different than any other library. The truth is that ALL books should be available for free to read online… in their entirety, just like they should be, and mostly are, at libraries. The fact that folks can then choose to buy the book, right from Google Books, either in eBook format or as an actual published work would only benefit the original author of the book. They don’t even get that benefit from a library… but maybe this is something libraries should do as a way to increase revenues without constantly wanting more taxpayer funding.

BUT… this settlement by Google Books does open the door to a class-action lawsuit for sites like the Wayback Internet Archive, all of the Search engines, etc., possibly being in violation of copyright laws as well, since they “copy” some or all of every webpage they crawl. The Wayback Internet Archives actually stores archived copies of every page on the internet whereas search engines merely copy a snipet of the page to show up in the search results and has “cached” snapshots of webpages… but nonetheless, it’s a “copy” of something that is copyright protected, without the original author’s permission.

Lenny Vasbinder

Sign me up… I want my piece of Google too!!!!

Lenny