Melville House Books

While the mainstream settles into huge sighs of abrupt relief and not-overly explained declarations of the wondrousness of the Google Inc.-Association of American Publishers settlement (fairly well summarized in this New York Times report co-authored by Miguel Helft and the one and only Motoko Rich, although Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times book blog Jacket Copy does a far better summary of the actual deal here), stray wackos in the book blogosphere — oh yeah, that would be thee and me — find themselves nagged by what used to be known as the questioning of authority: “My initial reaction is that the sums involved for the rights to digitize individual books are quite modest — just $60 a title, going up to $300, with some additional cabbage if you agree to make your book available to institutional subscribers,” notes veteran book industry reporter Ed Nawotka in this dispatch for the Beyond Hall 8 blog. Even more interestingly, Nawotka continues: “My second reaction is that Google got off cheap — $125 million is pocket change for what the company estimates will shortly amount to a database of 20 million books …. What’s more is that Google.com have, with this agreement, fully insinuated themselves into the publishing process. Publishers, authors and agents will have to decide — ‘Do we play with Google?’” Nawotka saves his most piercing observation for last, however, when he notes that “this cements Google as the industry leader in the distributions of digital books. Sure, there’s Amazon with its Kindle, and the Sony E-Reader … each with hundreds of thousands of titles available. But what happens when Google links its open source Android operating system — now powering cellphones — to the Google Book Search? You will, quite literally, have a library in the palm of your hand.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.