Barbara Quint was only able to participate by phone in Tuesday Googlebrary panel at the Internet Librarian 2005 conference in Monterey. So she sent Paula Hane a short note sketching her take on the issues:
Way back in 2006, Google -- irritated at those lawsuits from the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers -- set up Google Press. It then urged the authors of the world to check their publisher contracts, find the books that had gone out of print with publishing rights, come back to the authors and send copies of the books (or the ISBNs to match with Google library holdings) to Google Print. In return, Google would promise to delivery saleable e-books back to the authors and direct all interested users to them for sales -- no royalty percentage, ALL the money for the sale. Five years later (2011?), Google Press had become Google Full Court Press with imitator services available from the Open Content Alliance, Amazon, et al. Print-on-demand services and outsourced editorial staffs had made Google a major new avenue for book authors. All libraries received one free access seat for all books in the program, plus one free P-O-D copy on request. Book publishers were scrambling to hang on to their authors and re-negotiating royalty payments as all authors gained leverage from the developments.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/27/2005 09:27:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
