The Warren Adler E-Sheet 44

In this issue:

• Greetings From Publishing Central
• Fighting the Wrong Battle at the Wrong Time for the Wrong Reasons

	Greetings From Publishing Central We are happy to offer you another issue of the Warren Adler E-Sheet, which keeps you up to date on what is happening in the author's world.

Fighting the Wrong Battle at the Wrong Time for the Wrong Reasons

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.

In a nutshell, the suit against Google contends that Google's project to digitalize whole books and make available snippets in their search engines is a violation of the author's copyright, which endures more than seventy years beyond an author's lifetime. Moreover, the idea behind the suit is that Google makes money on its adjacent advertising and therefore the authors of the material being searched should be compensated for the privilege of viewing their work. (See Google Book Search.)

It may provide an opportunity for rediscovery and perhaps income to the heirs of the author since their copyright will last through nearly three generations beyond their lifetime.

It is true that this vast data bank of material will be the lure for people seeking to advertise their products or services to people who are eyeballing the data provided free by Google. Dependent on advertising for their revenue stream, they will not sell an author's works but refer them to vendors online. Through Google's free search engine, millions of people throughout the world will be given the opportunity to become aware of an author's books, even if they have been relegated to out of print status which is the fate of more than 80% of published books.

Where is the upside for those authors of books that have been declared out of print by the publishers? For them, at long last, people will have an opportunity to be aware of the author's work, and perhaps enhance or resurrect an author's career path, providing he is still alive and writing. Or it may provide an opportunity for rediscovery and perhaps income to the heirs of the author since their copyright will last through nearly three generations beyond their lifetime.

For those books not declared out of print but not being currently promoted by the publishers, Google's search engines will, at the very least, provide the possibility for a potential customer to view passages of the work in a virtual bookstore and with luck spark an interest in purchasing the book. Is that a downside for an author who still has a book in print, albeit one that is not advertised and not publicized or promoted by the publisher?

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.

Will they next go after the major newspapers who supply their readers online with First Chapters without compensation to the authors? Will the Authors Guild sue the newspapers for this obvious violation of copyrights?

Will they ask for a piece of the profits of the coffee shops which are part of the Barnes & Noble bookstores or others of a similar nature where a reader will take a book off the shelves and read it free without any compensation to the author? There is another violation of copyright.

As any author will tell you, the worst fate for an author is not being read.

Will they sue to ask for a piece of the flourishing used book market, or shut down groups like Book Crossing for freely lending books without compensation to the author?

Will opting out of the Google data bank because Google will not pay the author for opting in, improve the book's chances of sales or resurrection depending on its status? Remember the old saying, if you're out of the rain you won't get wet. As any author will tell you, the worst fate for an author is not being read.

Authors will be a lot better served, if they concentrated their resources on other battles. I cite two examples.

1. How about mounting a battle to prevent publishers from declaring books "out-of-print." It is an antiquated idea that modern technology has made obsolete and it should be done away with. The concept is not the author's friend. Indeed, with digitalization it is no longer applicable. Tied to that system is the method of rights reversal, which allows the author to get his rights back from the publisher, the grounds being that their book is no longer a viable income producer and takes up too much warehouse space. The burden for the reversal is on the author who must ask for the return of his rights. How about making such a reversal automatic after a number of years if sales are low? Isn't that a more worthy project than fighting to block a book's awareness from public view?
    
2. 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?

The fact is that the Google Book Search program is good for writers. What other technology has made it possible for millions of people to, at the very least, have the opportunity to connect with potential readers. Indeed, every time I go into a library, whether public or private, and see books moldering on dusty shelves, some so high they are impossible to get to, I feel anguish for the poor author who, with blood sweat and tears created the work only to have it relegated to obscurity or oblivion.

I am hardly naïve about the principle behind the idea of copyright. I guard the copyright of my 28 published novels and numerous short stories and plays like Horatio at the bridge.

Yet, one can never know how valuable such a copyright will be in the future, although the chances are that, for most authors, it will be of dubious worth. Without massive contemporary fame created by enormous investment and repetition, like Mickey Mouse for example, the author's copyrighted material has only the tiniest chance of ever producing any revenues at all during the life of the copyright.

Nevertheless I soldier on, believing in my soul that my books are viable for contemporary sales and, as time goes on, a resurrection, a second life, sometime in the future. It is for this reason that I have become a patient pioneer in creating e-books and print on demand sales of my novels, a project that is beginning to show the results contemplated in my business plan.

Indeed, what good is copyright protection if the work to be protected is virtually dead.

The inescapable fact is that the digitalization of books is an enormous boon to writers. It does not relegate an author's work to a disintegrating commodity on a musty shelf. A digitalized book is forever "in print." Indeed, authors should fight for the right to retain their digitalization rights, which might be yet another battle plan for the Authors Guild.

Publishers and bookstore chains have a lot more at stake in a suit against Google. They don't want anyone messing with their virtual monopoly on book distribution. That is not necessarily the author's fight.

What the author's goal must be, above all, is awareness of his work. Without awareness his book is merely a castoff artifact, forever exiled, beyond the reach of the reader, his authorial voice condemned to silence and all potential earning power gone. The odds are that today's bestseller will one day, certainly in the course of the long life of his copyright, suffer the same fate. Indeed, what good is copyright protection if the work to be protected is virtually dead.

Authors should celebrate Google's plan, not fight it.

E-Sheets 1 to 43

For your convenience, we now offer an online archive of Warren Adler E-Sheets. See the E-Sheet archives now.

Until next time, happy reading.

Warren Adler

If you like this E-Sheet, use the following form to subscribe for monthly distribution.

Visit Warren Adler's homepage now!