It is interesting to watch the opposition authors and their agents are having to the Google settlement. There are lawsuits and threats of lawsuits despite this being a much vetted agreement by several leading industry groups representing nearly all interests.
Most don’t understand it, as they have not read the agreement’s hundreds of pages and then they still may not understand it. Frankly, many of us publishers in the industry don’t get it 100% either. We are all a bit ignorant and perhaps even a little scared at least with one aspect of Google, as I indicated in an
earlier post.
Regardless of the ignorance, there seems to be one major point that all of these folks talking lawsuits seem to forget….books are becoming less relevant and content on the Internet is becoming more relevant every single day.
You would have to be wacko crazy to not want your books present on Google today. Tim O'Reilly said, “The enemy of authors isn't piracy, it's obscurity.” Google is one of the best ways for authors and their important messages to avoid obscurity and have an impact.
Oh…and authors will sell far more books with a presence on Google, which is what this is really all about any way…$$$$$.
The bottom line is that less people want their content in books. The model is changing and the old guard hates it; this is NOT what they signed up for. Most of them will not be the content creators, representatives, producers and distributors of the future.
What say you?
Posts
