Best-selling novelist Warren Adler sides with Google
Here–from Warren Adler; yes, the Warren Adler, author of The War of the Roses. Excerpt:
People have been telling me for years that authors in general are totally brain dead when it comes to business decisions. I have always denied this accusation, but it appears that the Authors Guild, which purports to represent authors, is pursuing a lawsuit against Google that confirms this general opinion…
Of course, being included in the Google search engine is no guarantee that the book will ever be called up by a click of the keys. But the very fact that it might trumps all possibilities available to authors with books out there collecting dust on library shelves or being sold by second hand dealers which provide no financial benefit at all to the author. The Authors Guild suit wants Google to pay the author a royalty for putting the book into its search engine.
In my opinion, the Authors Guild is fighting the wrong battle at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. They are, in effect, fighting the publisher’s war, not their own. For the bringers of the suit, I say beware of what you wish for.
The TeleRead angle: Adler writes: “Another noble authors cause would be to get libraries to pay authors a fee for each borrowed book. A library buys a book which is read by multiple people without any further compensation to the author than what he is due as a royalty on the sale of a single book. Such fees are paid to the author in some other countries. Why not the United States?” From the start of TeleRead initiative–in fact, even before the first article appeared–I’ve suggested this business model. I wrote: “In all cases, TeleRead would pay fairly. If you wrote a book, for example, your earnings would depend on how often people dialed it up.”
November 30th, 2005 at 9:10 pm
i say a penny per download to the creator.
two cents total charged to the downloader,
with the second penny supporting the system.
up to 10 million downloads, anyway: $100,000.
at the point, the content merges into the culture,
so fame, rather than money, accrues from then on.
or you can write another, new book for your readers…
-bowerbird
December 1st, 2005 at 11:56 am
Mr Adler is perfectly within his rights to allow his own material to go into the Google project. It is the fact that Google is unilaterally making that decision for other writers that is the problem.
I strongly disagree that libraries should pay authors for loaning books; the library has to cover their costs, and this “pay-per-view” creates a variable cost that is difficult for under-funded libraries to budget for. Libraries exist for free access to its materials to benefit society as a whole. Turn libraries into rental stores and we seriously undermine their benefit, especially to the nation’s poorest.
December 1st, 2005 at 1:19 pm
richard said:
> It is the fact that Google
> is unilaterally making that decision
> for other writers that is the problem.
it’s intellectually dishonest to say google
“is unilaterally making that decision”
if you don’t immediately add that google
is explictly letting copyright owners “opt out”.
given that additional _fact_, it seems to me
that it is actually the copyright owners who
have total and complete power on the decision,
which — of course — is the _exact_opposite_
of the story you were trying to “spin” here…
-bowerbird
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:07 pm
I’m not spinning anything here.
It is not the burden of the copyright owner to opt out of Google’s scheme; the burned is legally on Google to obtain permission first. That is how copyright law works.
Google didn’t provide the opt out notice until copyright owner’s raised a stink. It is not a sufficient legal answer. The phrase “All Rights Reserved” already makes it clear that the owner’s have “opted out”.
There is absolutely no intellectual dishonesty in what I’m saying here.
December 3rd, 2005 at 3:09 am
richard said:
> It is not the burden of the copyright owner
> to opt out of Google’s scheme;
> the burned is legally on Google to
> obtain permission first. That is
> how copyright law works.
are you the judge who is going to decide this case?
> The phrase “All Rights Reserved†already makes it clear
> that the owner’s have “opted outâ€.
“fair use” is a right that google has every “right” to “reserve” too.
so, i ask you again, are you the judge who is going to decide this case?
> There is absolutely no intellectual dishonesty in what I’m saying here.
well, maybe you just have a knack for thinking you’re smarter than us.
-bowerbird