Comments on: [publishing] A bit more on the banal evil of the Google books settlement

By: Grant K

Grant K — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:46:41 +0000

I need to pay more attention to this.

By: [publishing] The Google Books settlement and your legislators | jlake.com

[publishing] The Google Books settlement and your legislators | jlake.com — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:34:01 +0000

[...] [publishing] A bit more on the banal evil of the Google books settlement »04-24-2009 [...]

By: Matt H

Matt H — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:40:18 +0000

Ah, understood on both counts.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:27:59 +0000

I have not yet opted out, and even if I do, they have 13 months or something to remedy. And to be clear, I don’t actually object in principle to what Google is trying to do with the book search. I object to the precedent they’ve set for how copyright licensing is managed, which is profoundly frightening to authors.

(And thank you for the compliment.)

By: Matt H

Matt H — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:17:52 +0000

As part of the tech generation, I’m probably a bit odd in that I’ve never used the book search in my life. Only ever used it when I read your first post about this. By habit, if I want to read a book, I go to abookstore, and you know old habits…

Anyway, I did a cursory scan of the book search and found Escapement on there, not the whole thing, but a “preview”; the “preview” being 377 pages of the book. I’m just a bit curious, first of all, how this passes as a preview, and second of all, how do they have this up there in the first place? Have you not opted out/objected? Can they publish a “preview” of +/- 75% of your work whether you’re opted out or not?

I don’t know what jollies people get off of reading a 377 page “preview” for free. At $7.99+tax Escapement a bloody steal IMHO.

What a piece of work this agreement is…