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Fair Game: German and American Book
Publishers Wrestle with Google Print |
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24 October 2005 |
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This year's Frankfurt Book Fair drew more than 250,000
people to the world's largest content event, but the
biggest event for books during the fair was the alignment
of camps in the fight over Google Print. American
publishers are suiting up for a fight on copyright issues,
while German publishers seem to be more wiling to let
Google be Google and to get on with building stronger
online presences for searching and consuming books. Given
the history of other recent wars on copying premium content
guess who's likely to be the richer of these two camps in a
few years' time? It's time for all publishers to embrace
fair use of book content for searching and to focus on how
they're going to make money in a search-enabled world. |
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As the
Frankfurt Book Fair draws to a close this mega-event for
publishers, suppliers and book-lovers affirms the strength of
books as a drawing card for commerce and consumers. When more
than a quarter million people from 101 countries can parade
past 7,000-plus exhibitors it is clear that books remain a
powerful common denominator for publishing. Yet as powerful as
the Frankfurter Buchmesse is as an event, the headlines that
seemed to grasp at the industry the most this past week came
from the impact that the online world is having on book
publishers.
The
Association of American Publishers broke
news that they had decided to sue Google for copyright
infringements after their negotiations with Google over their
Google Print
book-scanning program broke down, with AAP President Patricia Schroeder
claiming that "Google is seeking to make millions of dollars by
freeloading on the talent and property of authors and
publishers." A few days later
Reuters brought news that the
German
Publishers & Booksellers Association has decided to help
publishers build their own online database of books for
searching, selling and perhaps even borrowing. This
announcement also came on the heels of Google's announcement of
eight local Google Print sites for European countries.
The difference in responses between the U.S. and German
camps is telling. The AAP response is to challenge the right of
anyone to make a digital copy of a work without a publisher's
authorization. As Schroeder continued in her statement to
Reuters, "If Google can make … copies, then anyone
can...anybody could go into a library and start making digital
copies of anything." The Germans would prefer to have
publishers hold their own texts instead of being tied to
Google's privately held copies but in large part accepts search
engines as useful promotion channels for print products that
help to facilitate their own sales. All in all, the more
rational approach in this instance appears to be the German
approach - letting Google be Google and letting publishers be
publishers.
In the broader picture the suits against Google are largely
moot. Book publishers have tarried far too long with old models
and channels while online technology has bloomed all around
them. The intelligent response to that technology is to embrace
it aggressively and to recognize that both publishers and
authors of books will benefit from the widest access possible
to the most affluent and content-hungry audience available -
the online audience. That access requires a willingness
to place content in the best available channels, including
search engines, so that it meets an audience's interests and
needs when the moment and context is right. Anything less will
be commercially self-defeating. A few points to bear in mind
when contemplating these approaches:
- Learn from the file sharing wars. The AAP approach
seems eerily like a replay of the legal battles between music
companies and file sharing services, blaming the
long-standing presence of readily available technology for
the lack of initiative taken by rights holders to exploit
that technology effectively. While lawsuits by the
RIAA may
have had some education benefits for music downloaders, their
commercial impact has been negligible. By contrast, when
rights holders began to exploit downloading channels with
protected content the legitimate download industry began to
flourish along with search engines such as
MP3.com that help downloaders find the music that they're
looking for from multiple outlets. Lesson learned: effective
and legal searching is content's best friend. Corollary
lesson: enabling users to help other users find content is
one of the most effective marketing methods available.
- Be rational about copyright. While Google has not
made a world of friends in the publishing world with its
scanning efforts - what some have gone so far as to call "copy-rape"
- its display of copyrighted materials seems in general to
fall squarely into "fair use" territory. As we noted in our
earlier news analysis on copyright the notion of
copyright in a digital era has less to do with restricting
electronic reproduction than it does with being able to
define what's done with a digital object once it's been
replicated. Focus on the rights, not the copy, for the
ability and predilection to copy is a given. There may be
some important points to clarify in the application of
copyright law in the digital age that will benefit from a
judge's input, but if those clarifications stifle effective
search engines then it will be to the detriment of all
publishers.
- Embrace digital object packaging aggressively. It
was naive for book publishers to think that their "Google
moment" would come on their own terms at their own pace. This
may be in part because of the success and sophistication of
Amazon.com as an online retail presence that had sheltered
booksellers from the wider search and content consumption
environment. But the days of central online storefronts as
the primary vehicles for locating and consuming content are
dwindling. In their place is an evolving commercial
environment in which monetization follows the distribution of
digital objects rather than distribution following
monetization. Adapting such a commercial framework requires
embracing electronic packaging for titles aggressively
instead of becoming reliant on third parties such as Yahoo!
or Google. Google's efforts are a challenge to the
publishing industry to finally adopt electronic content
packaging for titles old and new in order to popularize them
with as many audiences as possible. Can you say...searchable
eBooks?
We still love the output from Guttenberg's invention, but
complaining about why online markets don't work like print
markets is about as effective as trying to build a better
yesterday. The methods required to drive the success of book
titles online and in print rely squarely on the ability of Web
search engines to search content agnostically. Although Google
may have painted itself into a bit of a corner for now it's up
to book publishers to consider the broader question of how to
survive in an era in which the ability to copy content is a
given. Creative publishers will look beyond the Google issue
and, like the German publishers, embrace as many channels as
possible to ensure a profitable future.
-
John Blossom
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