Some publishers had bookish friends abroad and through correspondence or the occasional overseas trip a book would get translated and published in another country, and the publisher would kick a little money back to the author.[1]
When paperbacks took off, through lucrative deals with paperback publishers, that became another right to carve out, as did film, and book club, and serials, and audio.[1]
Publishers are now strenuously making the argument that ebooks are like paperbacks, a primary right, and they cannot create a publishing strategy for a title without controlling rights to both print and digital.[1]
From a simple and random visit on Amazon.co.uk, I got this result which supports the above:
E-book publishers have unsurprisingly been in the vanguard of offering new terms to authors, often as a way of competing against the big established print houses.[1]
Richard Nash, the former publisher of print indie Soft Skull who is now setting up Cursor, a new publisher proposing an innovative crowd-sourced digital+print model, has been more vocal about overturning the copyright status quo. Nash thus offers Cursor authors 3-year renewable contracts, in return for a fairly broad basket of rights in the license.[1]
In this model, authors stop carving out rights. They hand almost everything over to the publishers and give them maximum flexibility to experiment with format, pricing, sampling, enhancements, and territory – BUT, for a very limited time. At the end of those 3-5 years, everyone reassesses.[1]
A switch to this kind of contract would upend the current business model in publishing and force the legacy businesses into a massive reorganization, probably involving no small degree of shrinkage. Is this the way forward?[1]
The answer depends on your understanding of the digital transition we’re in the midst of. If ebooks are like paperbacks, a new format that will cause some disruption but ultimately expand readership and learn to coexist peacefully with previous formats, then the old business model with its grip on life-of-copyright may well survive. [1]
If, on the other hand, today’s ebooks are the harbinger of an all-digital future that will crack the walls of print and bring them crumbling down, well in that case, the revolutionaries are at the gate.[1]
Google Books
Google Books is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database.[4]
Subscribing users can click on a result from Google Books that opens an interface in which the user may view pages from the book, if out of copyright or if the copyright owner has given permission. Books in the public domain are available in full view and free for download. For in-print books, Google limits the number of viewable pages through a variety of access limitations and security measures, some based on user-tracking.[4]
Most scanned works are no longer in print or commercially available. For those which are, the site provides links to the website of the publisher and booksellers.[4]
The Google Books database continues to grow. For users outside the United States, though, Google must be sure that the work in question is indeed out of copyright under local laws.[4]
As of 2010, the number of scanned books was over 15 million.Google estimated in 2010 that there were about 130 million unique books in the world, and stated that it intended to scan all of them by the end of the decade.[4]
On May 2010, it was reported that Google will launch a digital book store termed as Google Editions. It will compete with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and other electronic book retailers with its very own e-book store. Unlike others, Google Editions will be completely online and will not require a specific device (such as kindle, Nook, iPad, etc.).[4]
The publishing industry and writers’ groups have criticized the project’s inclusion of snippets of copyrighted works as infringement. In late 2005 the Authors Guild of America and Association of American Publishers separately sued Google, citing massive copyright infringement.[4]
Google licensing of public domain works is also an area of concern due to using of digital watermarking techniques with the books. Some published works that are in the public domain, such as all works created by the U.S. Federal government, are still treated like other works under copyright, and therefore locked after 1922.[4]
About two million books that are in the public domain, such as works of William Shakespeare, currently can be viewed free on the Google Books site. Google Books users currently can view long previews of another two million books that are in copyright and in print, thanks to agreements between Google and tens of thousands of publishers that were separate from the legal settlement. Millions more books that are in copyright but out of print are currently available in Google Books in a shorter ‘snippet view.’ Had the settlement been approved, users would have been able to see longer previews and potentially buy those books.[4]
Book Copyrights
The Authors Guild has had to fall back upon stale black-and-white arguments about their inviolate right to make copies of their own works. Yet they fail to mention sections of the U.S. copyright law that strongly support what the universities are doing, and how they are doing it.[2]
Section 108(e) of the copyright law permits libraries to make copies of out-of-print works for patrons, and Section 107 spells out critical fair use provisions, in which noncommercial scholarly intents are especially worthy of exemption.[2]
Pirated ebooks available in the Android App Market appear to be limited to pop culture titles that are likely to be in demand, particularly amongst a younger audience, with many users happy to download them qualm-free.[3]
The Android App Market is far from alone in this problem. Amazon’s self-publishing platform has been facing a surge in both spam and pirated books, and has probably been the one platform that has been hit the hardest, due to an unmoderated submission process.[3]
Even Apple’s near-watertight outfit has fallen prey to pirated books. Last year, four Japanese publishers complained to Apple that pirated copies of their books were available in Apple’s iBookstore.[3]
Google’s method of action is far less intrusive, but at the same time, very ineffective. They wait until they receive a complaint, after which the pirated e-book will be taken down.[3]
Amazon themselves have already come up with a method to discourage piracy, by allowing users to borrow e-books from bricks-and-mortar libraries in the USA. Sadly, they were also quick to shoot themselves in the foot, by crippling third party sites built around the idea of lending titles between users. This method of course does little to stop spam books reaching Amazon’s self-publishing platform.[3]
Ironically, these very platforms – Apple, Amazon and to a lesser extent Android, which have spurred on e-book piracy, have also forced publishers to think twice about how to approach the electronic medium because of their popularity.[3]
Consumer awareness is the most important tool that can be used in the battle against spam books. A simple Google search can often lead readers to the exact same content online for free.[3]
References
[1] http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2010/copyright-ebooks-and-the-unpredictable-future/
[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/the-fight-over-the-future-of-digital-books/245577/
[3] http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/06/24/does-e-book-piracy-really-matter/
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_books
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