Members of the Authors Guild who vociferously opposed Google Books now support the initiative. The estates of author John Steinbeck and songwriter Woody Guthrie, which led a successful movement to postpone the opt-out deadline to January 28, said they are now happy with the revised Google Books plan in an e-mail the Authors Guild sent to its members on Thursday.
The Authors Guild, along with the Association of American Publishers and major publishers, sued Google over the plan in 2005, forcing the tech behemoth to pay a $125 million settlement to copyright holders. Its announcement of support indicates that more authors believe problems with Google Books have been solved, which could lead to more books being included in the offering.
Pressure from the Authors Guild, other book industry groups, and the United States Justice Department forced Google to revise its plan (.zip), lowering the barrier to other companies licensing its collection of digitally-scanned books and appointing an independent trustee to make decisions on behalf of the authors of orphaned works whose copyright holders cannot be found.
In the e-mail, Gail Steinbeck, daughter-in-law of the prominent author John Steinbeck and party to the settlement, wrote, "majority of the problems that we found to be troubling have been addressed," according to the New York Times.
Unless an author or publisher opts out of the settlement before January 28, Google can store their books digitally, allow web users to search them, and sell digital copies of the them, keeping about 37 percent of resulting revenue and passing the rest on to authors and publishers. Authors who've opted out of Google Books and want to opt back in given the changes have until next Thursday to do so.
Google Books is expected to launch early this year, and plans to sell e-books to a wide variety of device owners, from generic computers to name-brand e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. In anticipation of the launches of both Google Books and whatever Apple has planned book-wise for its upcoming tablet, Amazon announced earlier this week that it will increase its e-book royalty payout to authors and publishers to 70 percent of revenue starting June 30.
Although Steinbeck's and Guthrie's heirs now support Google Books, others continue to criticize it for being monopolistic or infringing copyrights. The Open Book Alliance, whose members include Google competitors Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo, asked Congress on Tuesday to replace Google Books with a public digital library run by a non-profit entity. The final Fairness Hearing, after which the plan moves forward for all authors and publishers who have not opted out, takes place on February 18 in New York federal court.
See Also:
- Who's Messing With the Google Book Settlement? Hint: They're in Redmond, Washington
- Google Lets You Custom-Print Millions of Public Domain Books
- Read Google Books on Your iPhone
- Google Book Plan Hits Privacy Snag
- DoJ Asks Court to Nix Google Book Search Settlement
- Critics: Google Book Deal a Monopoly, Privacy Debacle
